PCs in Business Environment

"PCs in Business Environment" is a project that contains two parts. First part is a real life application developed for Nordic Meat Inc. a small food - manufacturer in the KC area, developed in MS Excel 5.0 spreadsheet supported by the Visual Basic Application Language. The application represents a production module as a supplement to the UNIX information system the company has been using for several years. This part of the report consist of four chapters. Through these chapters I presented problems Nordic has had with product cost structure and product formulations, scheme of interaction between the UNIX system and the PC based system and the solution which I developed in the last couple of months. In the second part I attempted to answer how to solve "intangible" problems during the phases of system development and system adoption. In the environment of small business which I encountered it was really hard to have people accept the computer. They were afraid of it, they wanted to prove it is producing wrong reports; in other words they wanted to do business as they used to do. It takes time for everyone to adopt change. Through presentations, informal conversation and meetings with employees and management I managed to succeed. The system which I developed emulates information flow in the plant when the PC was not present and reports contain similar information as previously, so everyone is able to find information needed. In the sixth chapter I answered the question which has been directed to me frequently: “What computer and what system suit my business needs?" Though there is no unique answer to the question, I do believe that a company should have a computer person inside who is familiar with its needs and business. This approach initially looks costly but it reduces a risk of a system abandonment and a project failure. Lastly, I commented on future trends in the PC industry. I believe that the future belongs to computer networks in every organization. My concern is on1y the fact that the pace of computer hardware and software industry is too fast for business people to catch up with and take full advantage of all the new software opportunities offered