Smooth Flow of Communication, Essay Example

Introduction

Reliable and smooth flow of communication is an integral component of efficient operations management. The competitive intensity continues to increase which only further increases the importance of faster and convenient communication technologies in order to improve working relationships among departments as well as team members.Up to now, email has been primarily used for internal communication purposes but there is a general internal consensus that instant messaging will significantly improve the internal communication system.

Background

Instant messaging systems have been embraced by a large number of corporations because they offer several advantages over email including speed and convenience. Corporations have choices of both free and paid instant messaging systems. Just like email systems, organizations strive to find the right balance between security, cost, convenience, and features. This report covers a number of instant messaging systems and discusses their potential pros and cons.

Evaluation

One option available to the company is Winpopup LAN messenger. It supports both client-server and peer-to-peer communications. Winpopup supports both group and one-to-one chat. While the server is free and there is no cost for up to three users, additional users require $14.95 per license even though the vendor offers volume discount. Second option is Openfire which is not only free but also open source. While the main capability is text chat only, plugins are available to support additional features such as voice and video. The third option is DBabble which is highly customizable and configurable.DBabble is especially suited to large corporations since it can support up to 10 million user databases and more than 10,000 users per server. Each server is priced at nearly $500, thus, average cost declines with the number of users. The fourth option is BigAnt Instant Messenger. BigAnt includes offline messaging, group chat, voice, and video chat features. The messenger is capable of logging messages which can be audited by the system administrators. The Pro version has additional features like desktop sharing, bulletin boards, and document management. BigAnt server costs $299 while each client license costs $15.90 though the vendor does offer volume discount. The fifth option available to the company is Bopup Communication Server which is quite similar to BigAnt but doesn’t support voice and video. Features offered by Bopup include bulletins, file transfer and distribution, and messages archiving for regulatory purposes. Bopup’s server costs $190 while each user license costs $12.90. But Bopup does offer incentives to small businesses by providing a free server for 10 to 20 user licenses.

Recommendation

BigAnt and Bopup emerge as the leading contenders. First of all, these two are the only instant messengers which behave very much like email clients while retaining the traits associated with instant messengers such as speed and convenience. These two messengers also have features that allow for better monitoring to ensure employees do not engage in unproductive use of instant messaging. These two messengers offer several features that help enhance productivity such as bulletin posts. But BigAnt has edge over Bopup in certain areas. For example, BigAnt offers voice and video which Bopup doesn’t. In addition, upgrading to Pro version if the need does arrive in the future will enable the organization to take advantage of other productive features such as desktop sharing and document management. Thus, it is recommended that the management invest in BigAnt which will help significantly improve the internal communication system.