How Computers Benefit Businesses

The business world of the 21st century is becoming more demanding and challenging as operations grew bigger and more complex with projects that need to be done in smaller time frames. There is very little room for even slight errors and mistakes; as such errors can cost businessmen millions of dollars. Therefore, reliable workforces are much needed to get projects done quickly as well as efficiently. This is why computer-aided tasks are becoming an increasingly popular trend nowadays.

The first generation of computers dates back to as early as the 1940's. The computers of that time however proved to be a hassle just to run and maintain it to be of any use to businesses of the times. It was very huge, extremely sluggish and slow but worst of all, it was very expensive to build one (Take note that computers aren't commercially sold yet at the time). Not to mention its maintenance and running costs. Computers of the time consume great amounts of energy, and are very unreliable due the use of electronic parts that tend to fail all the time. Also the user needs to learn and understand the machine language in order to operate the computer. All of these factors waste invaluable time and money unnecessarily. Therefore one would conclude that the usage of computers would be problematic rather than beneficial to businesses.

However we are now entering the 21st century, the era of modern civilization where technology plays a significant role in our daily lives.

Computers have advanced to great heights since the creation of vacuum-tube based computers, the 1st generation of computers. These modern computers otherwise referred to as the 4th generation of computers, are commercially available for personal and business use. Almost every family in developed or developing countries has at least one personal computer in their house.

Then there's the revolution of the Internet otherwise known as the World Wide Web. The Internet allows users from around the world to communicate with each other. Users can also lookup information about a particular topic, item, product or company on the Internet. More interestingly, users can also purchase items through the Internet, using secure online credit card transaction for example, which is an increasingly popular trend among users since it only requires a few mouse clicks. In addition to that, most business firms usually have access to the Web, enabling business users to connect to online references such as Yellow Pages, package shipping information, postal rates and legal information. Furthermore, more business firms are starting to build their own web pages, to advertise products, services and to take orders and request from customers. These online services are more commonly known as e-commerce (ref: Discovering Computers 2000, Shelly; Discovering Computers 2006, Shelly). This is of course provided that the company has the necessary equipment needed, which brings us back to computers. Computers are necessary for these tasks because Internet can only be accessed through a computer and computers are necessary to design, store, and update the webpage.

Modern computers are capable of processing large amounts of data in a very short time. For example, the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo microprocessor (see the above picture) is capable of processing 57 billions of operations per second. This simply means the computer will be able to perform tasks much faster than what human beings are capable of, saving invaluable time. Supercomputers, the most sophisticated type of computers are capable of executing 100 trillions instructions in a second, making it suitable for types of businesses that involve complex mathematical and scientific calculations, such as animated graphics, petroleum exploration, economic forecasting and engineering design & testing. BMW, the famous German car manufacturer would usually take three years to design a new car. But with the help of computers they managed to reduce the time required to less than 10 months.

Unlike human beings, computers process large amounts of data to produce results and information that is completely free from any form of error and mistakes. Errors only occur if data or instructions itself that are being keyed into the computer contains error. This is very important for companies to avoid problems, because a slight error can be costly as mentioned