Today, organization have greatly embraced the use of technology. Electronic commerce has been a major computing technological development which has paved a new way of carrying out businesses (Pokorny & Stantic, 2016). These computing technologies include the use of social media, analytics and cloud computing amongst others. They have a radical impact socially and economically. However, these technologies adopted by organizations presents set of advantages and disadvantages to the organization’s management. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using social media, cloud computing and analytics in organizations.
It is important to use social media in promoting the organization. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, helps in generating interaction which result in a fast marketing. Retaining a proper long-term relationship with current customers has always been an uphill task for the traditional methods of marketing in organizations (Bondarouk & Olivas-Lujan, 2013). Social media provides a platform that is empowered through social interaction which ends up developing the organization and its customers. Maintaining a constant interaction with the customer builds a mutual long lasting relationship which would be beneficial for the business. This regular interaction helps to improve the company’s reputation hence improving brand loyalty.
However, social media marketing can be disadvantageous to an organization since it can result in generating negative people who can damage the reputation of the organization. Social media is all-inclusive, incorporating malicious people with intent to deprive the organization’s reputation. The negative people such as scammers are always they to damage the organization’s reputation (Bondarouk & Olivas-Lujan, 2013). Their activities entail giving false negative feedbacks against the organization’s brand. Moreover, social media is susceptible to hackers and breach of privacy. Using social media might end up exposing the organization to online risks such as hacking which can end up in losing organization’s useful data and information.
Implementation of analytics in the organization is very important. Data analytics enables the organization to organize incoming data. This is facilitated by putting data into storage silo. Organizations manage to strategize and monitor all important data (Pokorny & Stantic, 2016). Data analytics provide quick retrieval of information whenever it is required which actual fasten the process of making a decision in the organization. Standardized structured data obtained from the analytics also helps to unveil new business trends which enhances the organization to achieve its objectives. Nonetheless, data analytics provides an opportunity for safe storage of data. Data is highly protected from malicious attempts of breach of privacy as protection level is increased. Not only does it protect organization’s data but also detects security issues that might arise.
However, data analytics can be of disadvantage to the organization since visualization of the data can sometimes be hard. The main object of data analytical process is to transform data into a more visible and proper layout (Pokorny & Stantic, 2016). When dealing with a large amount of data, the transformation procedure can be very hard as one finds it hard to decrypt the required data. Therefore, this poses a bigger challenge to the organization in terms of cost since strenuous data analytic process is quite costly.
Business areas nowadays have extensively used cloud computing. Cloud computing makes it able to retrieve data by virtual machinery and lightweight mobile gadgets that have the basis on flexible IT designs. Work efficiency is significantly improved by utilization of cloud computing in the business area since it allows multiple users to access one project simultaneously. Furthermore, cloud computing has the ability to eradicate the exorbitant costing of computing framework set up for solutions and services that have a basis on IT. Cloud computing similarly permits rising capability of the prevailing and new software (“Cloud Computing in Business,” n.d.). Thus, cloud computing permits business from handling information centers and allows business to concentrate more on growing and utilizing software that possesses business worth.
Nonetheless, amidst all the advantages that are provided by cloud computing, it has also been associated with disadvantages. Such include the possibility of a server hang-up or worse breakdown and therefore vital information and data which have not been placed in back-ups are lost. A great number of security and privacy constraints need to be comprehended and undertaken since data are stored in different corners of the globe that may not be controlled and reached. Companies can experience great losses and damages if their financial reports are exposed in business files (“Cloud Computing in Business,” n.d.). Thus, significant considerations should be taken to determine if cloud computing should be applied in the organization.
In conclusion, it is therefore evident that technologies have both advantages and disadvantage impacts on the organization. Therefore, as organizations continue to utilize their existing technologies or as well introduce a new technology, a well-thought decision has to be made since choices made on the types of technology to use usually have long-term effects which can either be positive or negative. Decisions made can be rigid and not possible to change in future. Most organizations should be keen on economic and social effects to ensure that they meet their organizational objectives.