Employment Opportunities - Working Styles Example

Name two different office applications that could be used by the small business to improve upon the paper based systems employed in the 1970s:

• Open Office - Calc

• Microsoft - Excel

Describe two advantages of each over the paper based system:

Since these two bits of kit do the same thing I'm going to talk about them together.

 It is a good way of organising and creating things like; invoices, making graphs and charts, keeping on track with budgets, controlling stock etc. Things that a small business would need to do.
 It doesn't diminish any jobs that people had using the paper based systems, but rather changes them. For example accountants will now use special software on a computer these days rather than 30 years ago when they had to use pens and paper and file it all away, after they've proof read it all for mistakes. The advantage to storing everything digitally is that with both Excel and Calc, you can type in formulae that allows you to update your statistics as soon as something changes. All that requires you to do is press a few buttons and the data is then up to date a lot quicker than recovering a piece of paper copying it over to another one just so you can change a little part of the data.
 And then you can save the file you made in to "My Documents" so space is never an issue since excel and calc files are only a matter of megabytes (which isn't much at all).

Describe one advantage of each over the other:

If you're a small business, then you probably budget very carefully and want to get the cheapest things possible without comprimising the profits of your business. In which case, Calc is free and pretty much does exactly the same thing that Excel ($150 - $500) does, putting you at a finacial advantage. Also, just another quick point, Calc is open source and anyone computer language savvy can change how the program runs and does different things. Excel can not do this.
 However, Excel has one major factor that is especially usefull when sharing your data across various systems. It is compatible with nearly every version of windows and linux only requires a few drivers to be installed to view the file (which doesn't take long). Another handy attribute is that even if you haven't blown $300 dollars on Excel but you need to view an Excel file, you can still view it as "read only". Open Office does not have this ability and when you have to view a Calc file on a computer that doesn't have Open Office then you are asked to go through an installation process in which you'll probably end up with all their services that you don't want on you're computer. Not good if you already own Microsoft Office.

How are secretaries and typists employment prospects affected by the advent of these office packages?

I personally can't see any disadvantage bestowed upon these occupations. In fact their jobs will just be exactly the same but all the data is typed (which is quicker), updated faster, and saved in a secure hard drive. If they need to look at the same data on a computer on the other side of the building then all they have to do is set up network sharing and just open the file up on the other computer. Ultimatley saving them from carring bundles of paperwork through the building which just isn't as practical.