John is a sales representative selling tools to garden centres and DIY stores. He travels over 1000 miles a week to see new and existing clients. For the past 20 years he has carried round a large diary, and address book, a large road atlas and numerous A-Zs, as well as numerous small coins for phones. He prides himself on his punctuality, but even so he is occasionally late as he struggles to find a new client or is delayed by traffic. He always takes along a calculator, and a bulky sales catalogue with the latest price lists and order forms. He is usually on the road four days a week, six hours a day and spends two further hours every day completing his administration. He spends every Friday in the office ensuring all his administration and sales are handled properly. He has always said he quite likes the time spent in his car between appointments, as it is his time when he can listen to CDs undisturbed.
Advantages
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There is a ton of ICT equipment which John can use, that would make his job a lot easier and save him a lot of time. First of all, he could buy a sat nav. This would make it a lot easier to find clients because it would tell exactly where to go until he arrives at his destination. A more advanced sat nav will also inform him about traffic, accidents and other things that could delay his trip. This will even further improve his punctuality.
He could also get a smart phone which could replace the sat nav seeing as almost every new has a GPS system. A mobile phone will also allow him to communicate with clients in case anything comes up or he has to reschedule. He can keep all the address on it to and he can look through the more easily. He can also kill some time playing angry birds and it has a calculator too.
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A bulky catalogue can be replaced with a laptop which has access to internet and therefore you can look up the catalogue online instead. Having a laptop would also mean that he doesn't have to come back every friday because he can deal with all documents on the road using software like Microsoft Word or Excel.
Disadvantages
On the other side, all this ICT equipment has some advantages too. First of all it's all really expensive compared to what he is using now. A new smart phone will set him back a few hundred pounds and so will the laptop. The sat nav can be bought for under a hundred pounds so that's not bad.
Seeing as he spends so much time in his car, he might struggle to keep everything charged, and if anything does run out of battery, he might be in a bit of a pickle.
Technology is not always right. Especially sat navs. Sometimes a sat nav can lead you to a wrong location meaning he won't arrive on time. A laptop might get a virus and he could lose all his important documents.
Also if any of this equipment breaks, it's very expensive to fix it or replace it.
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