Age of Technology- by Violet.

Computers. It has recently become an interesting topic of conversation of how much we actually use them in both work and play. Although MIS was my least favorite class in undergrad, I always wish I had paid more attention. All of those Excel tricks and Word formatting instructions would have been a lot more handy than I had originally thought in future finance, accounting and business writing classes. Even in law school I constantly would want to throw my computer across the room and wish I had paid more attention in computer class. So believe me, I maintained a wide-eyed vigilant attitude in my three MIS classes during my MBA this past year. The problem is, we don’t just learn about how to make a computer work, we also learn about how a computer works in a business and how to network and use the infrastructure and system maintenance. “IT Governance” was a term that was constantly on our exams, and I thought, again wrongly… it must be completely irrelevant to me.
Well, it seems I have again been confronted with a problem involving information that Baylor’s MBA program tried to drill into my head over and over again. My computer that I spend ten hours a day on at least- is shot to hell. Of course, it’s not a cool dramatic burst-into-flames story, but it might as well be for the time that I have lost on productivity.
At the firm I have been working for all summer, my big girl job entails me spending copious amounts of time researching law, typing memos and basically spending my entire days and nights work on the computer. The damn thing. So instead of being a regular desktop like my un-secured laptop at home, there is an entire system I have to log onto every day that provides me with (I guess) security to work without any one hacking into my brilliant work product (right..?). Up until now, I have had no problems whatsoever, so I say “if it ain’t broke, why are you fixin’ it?” But last weekend, over the memorial holiday, it was announced that the firm would be switching system providers to make things more efficient *(emphasis intended).
This memorial day fiasco has caused the computer to log people out continuously, delete their personal files, and set back appointments on outlooks calendar by hours. This new “system provider” has efficiently set us back more than a week. I have been able to research some, and attend hearings and trials, but I have wasted probably about ten hours a week just calling the IT people to reboot my computer. If I have to talk to Ricardo from IT in Austin, Texas one more time, I might just reach through the phone and show him a piece of my mind.
And it’s not just ME complainin’ (although I have been a little of a squeaky wheel), all of the administrative assistants on my floor and the other three floors have been voicing their doubts over our new system. Today, as my computer works perfectly, I lean back and think that this seems exactly like a case reading in our MIS class: system switches, change happens, and employees are dissatisfied. Just like Dr. Kayworth said, the transition time in switching system providers is always a rough patch in a company’s computer scheme, but usually the IT people are trying to do their best to put a more efficient system in place. Even if the efficient system takes some inefficiency to get used to. So today, I will hold my head up, print out law articles to read in case my computer crashes again and be positive that the IT people know what they are doing and wait for the system to fully integrate into a functional business process.