Importance of Information Technology in Business: An Analysis of Virgin Holidays

This report analyzes the significance of information technology in the business environment, with a focus on Virgin Holidays. It discusses different types of application software, ethical and social issues, networking technologies, impact of AI, and stages of software development life cycle.

Introduction to
Information
Technology

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Different types of application software can be used by business................................................3
Ethical and social issues and its importance...............................................................................4
Differentiate between different types of networking technologies ............................................6
Impact of Artificial intelligence in enhancing business operations............................................7
List and explain different stages of software development life cycle.........................................8
Analysis and discussion .............................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................9
REFERNCES:................................................................................................................................10
Books and Journals:..................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
The report aims to identify the significance of information technology in the business
environment. IRT plays an important role in the current scenario due to having large
complexities and technological advancement. During the Covid-19 pandemic, IT creates a lot of
impact on the business and individual working. Pandemic creates a situation of lock down and
people were sitting at home with no jobs, work and income. IT technology helps ]them to grow
and run business effectively with the use of effective software and internet(Benaben,Tapia, and
Sakurai, 2020). Therefore, this report is going to analyse the concept of information technology
and its uses in every aspect of life. There will be discussion of its type of application, ethical and
social issues and difference between network technologies in context of Virgin Holidays. The
company was established in the year 1985, England. The company works as a tour operator
which provide worldwide holiday packages and serve their business area within United
Kingdom. So that, the report will showcase the impact of IT in the success of travel service
company and how it leads to result in great profitability.
MAIN BODY
TASK
Different types of application software can be used by business
Application software in information and technology plays a vital role in performing
business activities. There are multiple task in the business which take place simultaneous that
may reduce the productivity of employees which require their focus on mainly complex and
potential task. Application software are those which is not pre-installed in the computer.
Therefore, different kind of application software which are used by Virgin Holidays are
described below:
Human Resource Information System (HRIS): human resource is the crucial function
of every business. It becomes difficult to keep every record of information of business
employees for their well bing, appreciation and rewards. A human resource management
software carry out many task like recruitment on boarding, training, record keeping and payroll.
These application software handles digital documentation.
Inventory Control System: Internet and technology has took rapid rise in the business.
Inventory solution becomes easy which keep the stocks maintained, monitor stock levels, keep

updates and turnover rates. Also, it uses for generating point of sales in Virgin Holidays. The
travel company needs to manage inventory in terms of travel bookings software, equipments and
other. Therefore, inventory requires to be monitored and managed effectively to save time and
money.
Communication Software: Communication is the important key to exchange and deliver
information from one individual to another (Benckendorff, Xiang, and Sheldon, 2019).
Application software for communication includes E-mails, web based, Microsoft office and
cloud based system in order to deliver thoughts and ideas effectively. In Virgin Holidays, these
software allows the employees to get updates and information reports with other departments in
order to maintain coordination.
Accounting Software: These software are useful for managing account and financial
reports of the business. These software are integrated with accounting principles which gives
advices, monitor business performance and track expenses and growth in profits. Virgin Holiday
uses this software to manage profits in the company through comparing past and present results.
Service Management Solution: These application software are required to keep
interaction among customer and organisation. In travel company, it is the most used software to
take travel booking, prepare itinerary, communication with them about doubts and queries.
Therefore, these software helps Virgin Holiday to enhance customer satisfaction and concern
their time by giving effective services.
Demand forecasting software: this kind of software is used to analyse the future
situation towards, organisation, forecasting of demand refers to analysing the growth of demand
for organisation services (Dadkhahipour, 2018). Through use of these software, Virgin Holidays
could look for the best seasons, offers and customer preferences to fulfil demand and attract them
towards taking travel packages.
Ethical and social issues and its importance
Ethics are the most important concept while looking forward for the growth of society,
economy and its people. A business works to contribute for the goodness of society which shows
their ethics, beliefs and value towards business practices. The growth of digitalisation leads to
create many ethical issues which are important for success. Ethical transformation of the
company create many opportunities as well as challenges which may result in unethical

practices. Therefore, Virgin Holidays needs to have these ethics while working with digital
technology as its importance is divided in many fields:
Design for privacy, security and integrity: information technology gives many
opportunities to collect information, ask for personal data and facts, keeps tracks and record of
customer insights may be riskier and termed as unethical practices. Therefore, virgin holidays
need to be prominent in keeping information safe and follow security standards to avoid any
wrong Impact on the company.
Promote trust: The ethics in digital era important to build trust and promote integrity
over the organisation (Insana, Hapsari, and Eko, 2019). Good ethics will attract customer and
gain their trust for long time. Ethics shows a concerned behaviour over customer rights,
information and data collected. Virgin Holidays promotes their services on the basis of religion,
culture and beliefs which leads to promote trust and configuration among customer.
Beware of biasses: ethical practices in the modern working environment become
significant to avoid any biasses within organisation or among customer. The data gets biassed
when it is not collected with high level of integrity and impartiality. Therefore, it is shows an
unethical behaviour of organisation and needs to be avoid to run effective business. It has
ascertained that the data that will be collected through AI and Machine learning need to be
secured and maintained.
Important to promote ethical culture: ethical practices are come out with an ethical
culture in the organisation. Virgin Holidays needs to promote ethics which concerns about
customer religion, beliefs while digitally providing services across worldwide nation. Promoting
ethical culture will eliminate these issues and society will interestingly participate in the services
of company. The success of organisation needs to be achieve through fairness, honesty and
integrity.
Ethics for digital success: In order to get success in the digital working of the
organisation, ethics are the most valuable things which connects and binds society, employees
towards organisation. It will lead to emphasize on working with honesty, fair values,
confidentiality and accountability while serving product and service into market. Digital growth
will help the Virgin Holidays to reach their functioning in other parts of the world and connects
with huge population.

Differentiate between different types of networking technologies
There are various types of networks which gets rise as in rise of technological
advancement. The growth of technology is required to manage various network topologies and
terminologies. These different types of network technologies are described below:
LAN: It refers to local area networks. In this, the computer or mobile could be connected
with the same networks. (Lloyd, 2020). It allows the user to have access of the same system at
the same location. It supports an areas which is less than a mile and mainly the same place or
house. These networks could connected through wires, cables, Wi-Fi and Ethernet.
PAN: Personal area network is used for the individual uses which supports for the short
range of networks which is maximum 30ft. These are the short networks which gets connected
without using internet. Bluetooth is the best example of PAN networks.
WLAN: these are the wireless network connectivity which are widely used for the
commercial purposes. These networks use high frequency, lasers and signs to promote
communication across different channels without electricity wires. Therefore, it is known as
wireless network connectivity. It makes the communication easy to move from one place to
another into its coverage. These networks can be connect to 2.4 to 5G bands. The best examples
are Bluetooth, Wi-fi radio, garage door openers.
WAN: it refers to wide area network. As the name says, these networks connects to a
rage of wide area. They are also give wireless experience of device connectivity through cellular
networks and internet. It does not have any limit in terms of geographical coverage as it provides
true connectivity over networks. These are supported by VPNs, FSO links IO interfaces. It is a
fast means of communication in the modern world which serve a great network for
communication across different cities and locations.
Difference between various networks
LAN PAN WLAN WAN
This network could be
work only in local area
with internet.
It supports non-
internet connections.
It also done not require
internet connection.
This network also
could connect without
internet.
It accepts device
connectivity only in
It supports connection
within distance of few
This network has wide
range of connectivity
This network allows
network to reach

small area. feet. but it does not support
wired connections.
directly to the user.
Impact of Artificial intelligence in enhancing business operations
Artificial intelligence is a machine learning language which is a part of big data. This
technology used to analogy and predict human actions through assuring qualities of their brain.
The business use this technology in order to achieve objectives by undertaking opportunities
from knowing customer actions, their wants and preferences. As there are a lot of trends and
complexities in market so that, organisation require actual information and control over the
market (Rainer, and Prince, 2021). Therefore, AI is a broad term which encompasses many
software that carry out human like activities and tasks. There are various functions carry out by
using artificial intelligence in the organisation. There are much impact of AI technology in
enhancing business performance which is described below:
Fast and effective talent recruitment: AI technology helps the organisations to perform
automatic function of recruitment which save time and cost. The Virgin Holidays take their
recruitment and attract candidates through sending emails, creating automatic invoices, screening
resumes and send mails and messages for interviews. This process does not take much time as it
is the crucial activity which save time for HR manager.
Informed decision making: AI refers to enhance the accuracy and reliability of data
which leads to make effective decisions and more targeted strategies will be set. AI technology
provide time concessions and automatic decisions which might satisfy customer wants and in
case of personalised services, Staff and managers would take actions. So that, by using these
technology, the managers will make time for decision process on crucial areas by using collected
information.
Simplified customer support: using AI technology is necessary to provide great
assistance to the customer at 24/7 services. Chatbots become vitally used in every organisation
and application which respond to the queries and customer question effectively. It is a live chat
tool which eliminate waiting time for the customer to get respond. Virgin Holidays takes
advantages of this AI service by solving business queries. Also, a new feature came along which
also understand the feeling of individual by using organisation service to get quick feedback.

List and explain different stages of software development life cycle
Software development life cycle has various stages which carry out crucial activities in
order to create software as per the requirement of company and its people. These phases are
described below:
Requirement gathering and analysis: this is the most crucial stage in which the idea
will be generate by analysing and gathering data about customer wants. The business managers
try to research all the believes and requirements of customers and analyse their expectations for
the organisation. For instance, the company will get to know about the customer demand for
online payments. So that, the company would analyse the requirement which needs to be
presented there in the software. The requirement should be clearly identifies by the software
developers and then an analysis should be done to check its feasibility. All the areas of this stage
is required for Virgin Holidays for the betterment of companies reputation and customer usage.
Design: once the idea and analysis will be done. The next stage is to talk about the design
of software which includes how it looks, its input and output software, logo and other features
will be implemented effective (Tapia, Benaben,and Sakurai, 2020). Therefore, design must be
unique yet simple to used and understand by everyone.
Implementation or coding: the software are design as per the coding documents. Once
the developer finalise these documents, it will be implement and process through coding
procedure. In this stage, all the features and elements will be taken into consideration to make it
successful. Coding is the main procedure of all which gives it a whole look.
Testing: This stage comes after the completing of coding process. The software which is
developed goes into testing for checking nay mistakes and requirement which is not yet taken
into consideration. This process finds out any defects which may harm the overall software or
not be worthy to use (Wu, 2020). Therefore, testing is necessary among customer which leads to
show the relevance of software and analyse its growth in the future market.
Deployment: After the final testing of the product, the company will create a deployment
environment in which, a copy of the environment will be made and finds the application as per
the expectations of customers
Maintenance: once the deployment of the product is done, the last stage of software
development is to maintain the products to be fixed or replacement is needs to be taken care by
the developers.

Analysis and discussion
Every organisation has different software installed as per their requirement. These
application used in monitoring, working in easy ways and make use of internet without any
obstacles. These software helps to generate relevant information of the working field. Innovation
takes place by undertaking AI experts knowledge on new issues arrives into market, to provide
great customer service by reaching new ways for bringing innovation (Watrous-deVersterre,,
2020). This helps the organisation to work on customer touchpoints which include how they
reach to the organisation website, from where they get the knowledge about product or service.
This helps in taking potential business decisions.
CONCLUSION
The report has concluded that information technology plays vital role in the organisation.
It has carried out many ways and enhancement of services to be used for better effective and
productivity in the business. The report has provided various kinds of application and its uses for
organisation. Also, there is analysation of various benefits and life cycle stage of the software
development which ascertain important stages.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
Benaben, F., Tapia, A. and Sakurai, M., 2020. Introduction to the Minitrack on Disaster
Information, Technology, and Resilience.
Benckendorff, P.J., Xiang, Z. and Sheldon, P.J., 2019. Tourism information technology. Cabi.
Dadkhahipour, K., 2018. Introduction to information technology for medicinal algae of
Iran. Technology of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of Iran, 1(1), pp.37-49.
Insana, D., Hapsari, A. and Eko, M., 2019. Increasing Entrepreneurial Creativity Through the
Introduction of Information Technology Utilization. In The 1st Workshop on
Multimedia Education, Learning, Assessment and its Implementation in Game and
Gamification in conjunction with COMDEV 2018. European Alliance for Innovation
(EAI).
Lloyd, I., 2020. Information technology law. Oxford University Press.
Rainer, R.K. and Prince, B., 2021. Introduction to information systems. John Wiley & Sons.
Tapia, A., Benaben, F. and Sakurai, M., 2020, January. Introduction to the Minitrack on Disaster
Information, Technology, and Resilience. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences.
Watrous-deVersterre, L., 2020. IT 101-004: Introduction to Information Technology.
Wu, Y.F., 2020. IS 265-102: Introduction to Information Systems (Revised for Remote
Learning).