Integrated Professional Skills in the Digital Age

This report discusses the different communication and collaboration tools used in the digital age, the advantages and disadvantages of cloud storage and computing, and the impact of online and offline business. It also explores the suitability of cloud storage and computing for different applications.

Integrated Professional Skills
in the Digital Age

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Different communication and collaboration tools.......................................................................3
The ways through which these tools helped the companies to survive in current pandemic......4
Advantage of Cloud Storage and Computing..............................................................................4
Disadvantage of Cloud storage and Computing..........................................................................5
Suitability of Cloud storage and computing................................................................................6
Applications of Cloud Computing...............................................................................................6
Positive aspects of online business and negative of offline.........................................................7
Negative aspects of online business and positive of offline........................................................9
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) is playing crucial roles in helping the
people in their works and also in their daily life. It is because the ICTs engineers are creating and
developing new services and applications on a daily basis in order to help the business and
society. This report will discuss the various tools of communication and collaboration and also
how they help the businesses in surviving in this pandemic situation. The report will also cover
the cloud storage and computing concept.
MAIN BODY
Different communication and collaboration tools
Basically, there are various communication tools available in order to ease the work of the
staffs of the companies. But the most important and useful tools which help many companies in
surviving in this pandemic are as follow:
 Zoom: This is a tool which help many individuals and business in managing and
arranging their daily task via online meetings and conferences. This cloud-based service
provides video conferencing, online meetings chats and mobile collaboration. Nowadays,
this apps are trending as the second most downloaded app in the world. It provides the
high-quality video and audio along with the recording of calls for the future review.
Many people at the same time can join the meeting which help the business very
significantly (Agarkhed and Ashalatha, 2017).
 Asana: This is a collaboration and communication tool which is founded by the
Facebook in the year 2008. This app is designed in such a way with the help of which the
companies the managers and team leaders are able to manage, track and organize the
workloads. This helps the team members in collaborating with each other and also make
easier to work on a project together even at work from home. This tool provides services
such as task assignment to teammates. Setting deadlines, creating projects and also chat
in a specific task.
 Slack: This is a messaging tool which is basically helpful for the video games developer
company because of its full-service collaboration platform. It is generally integrated with
the popular platforms such as Twitter and Dropbox in order to provide the best messaging
services to business. Here, the company can also able to share any type of photos and

videos and also as many as they like in order to promote their brand products and
services.
 Cisco WebEx: This is a tool with the help of which the company are able to conduct and
arrange large online meetings and conference. It is basically most widely-used online
meeting tools by the users all around the world. With the help of this tool the team
members are able to host and join the meetings along with share screens and documents
with each other’s. While presentation, each member can pass the control of the writing
and presentation to another on virtual white boards. The companies that are offering work
from home can also use this tool for collaborations, webinars, training and customer’s
support.
The ways through which these tools helped the companies to survive in current pandemic
Because of the covid-19 many people are working from home for their first time and the
companies are facing difficulties in adjusting their strategies according to this. But at the same,
there are various communication tools and online channels available with the implications and
use of which the companies are surviving. With this, the companies are managing the task and
activities via using Zoom platform. The company assign the task and the employees complete the
task and upload it on the platforms via using platforms. The companies are also able to make
decision without any delay by arranging online meetings and conferences. Not only that, the
companies are provide the training and development to the employees on this platform only
regarding how to use it on their daily routine (Karthiban and Smys, 2018). For example, Tesco
plc. offers products to the customers via online delivery by launching their own online shopping
platform. The best way the team leaders adopt to improve the collaboration of their team
members is by physical, operational and affinity skills. These tools help company in building the
trust of the consumers and employees on the business are make them interdependence.
Advantage of Cloud Storage and Computing
The various advantage of cloud storage to the companies that have used it in their business
are as follow:

 Cost reduction: Because of the no actual hardware expense are required while the
company uses cloud storage and the impact of which it helps in capital cost saving of the
company.
 Security: The cloud storage provides the security benefits to the companies and with the
help of which the companies are able to secure its confidential information and data from
the non-authorized personal. That’s why cloud storage is more reliable than the in-house
computing (Maithili, Vinothkumar and Latha, 2018).
 Easy to accessibility: The company can able to access the data from anywhere and at any
time and which increases the productivity efficiency of the business by ensuring the
accessibility of applications.
 Unlimited storage capacity: The cloud has the computing capacity of basically infinite
and the impact of which the companies can easily increase storage space at any time by
paying nominal value.
 High degree of collaboration: This helps in facilitating the safe and convenient
communication among the employees having the work from home in this pandemic
situation located in various geographics.
Disadvantage of Cloud storage and Computing
Along with advantage the cloud computing also provides various disadvantage to the
companies and that includes:
 Vulnerability to attacks: This is one of the downsides of dealing with cloud computing
provides because the confidential information of the company can be exchanged with the
third party and hackers. This might be cause loss to the company.
 Downtime: This may be arising when the cloud service provider faces the difficulty of
power failure, poor access to the internet and also low maintenance of service etc. This
creates challenge for the companies also that uses computing software.
 Limited control: Basically, the overall control on the server of the cloud computing is
with the cloud service provider so it may be possible the companies and cloud clients will
face minimal influence on their implementation.

 Vendor Agreement: As the implication of cloud computing involve agreement between
the party, so it might be result into the discrepancies and misunderstanding with the
service provider when the companies want to shift from one cloud platform to another.
 Technical issues: The company may face the difficulty of technical issues because cloud
infrastructure have another stability and other technological problems with attaining high
standards (Akomolafe and Abodunrin, 2017).
Suitability of Cloud storage and computing
While adopting cloud computing, every business has to ask themselves about which
application are going to suit their cloud storage and also produce business value for the company.
There are many applications available out of which many are born on the cloud and many are
relocated to it. Basically, cloud is the right choice for developing and testing the applications.
The applications suitable to cloud helps the company with faster prototyping and deployment
with zero capital and operational cost (Stieninger and et.al., 2018). The various social media and
collaboration applications are right suitable for the companies of any type because with this they
can promote their products and services to the ultimate consumers. The suitable cloud storage
must have disaster recovery service with the help of which the companies are able to back-up
their data in secured cloud environment. And for this the companies are need to hire the IT
professionals and experts having the technological and analytical skills. The productive
applications such as word processor, blogging, e-learning etc. are better and suitable with the
clouds which every company need to incorporate within their business. But in case, if there is
concern and issue regarding the privacy and sensitive business issues than using the cloud
computing is not at all suitable.
Applications of Cloud Computing
Basically, there are various applications of the cloud computing are available and that
includes:
 Word Processing Applications: This is one of the online and document editing
application with the help of which many candidates can access the same document and
also save it for the future changes.

 Presentation software: This involves the Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation app with
the help of which the companies can present the report in a well-structured way by using
its slides. Since, it is a web-based cloud applications, so anyone can able to access it from
anywhere around the globe.
 E-commerce software: This is one of the cloud-based e applications with the help of
which the companies are able to respond quickly to the market opportunities and
challenges. With this, the companies are also able to take competitive advantage without
wasting the time and unnecessary efforts (Zhang and et.al., 2019).
 Web applications for antivirus: This is an application which provide the security to the
company’s hardware and computers that is provided by Panda security on of the Spanish
company. For example, Cloud antivirus keep the virus away from the systems in order to
maintain a clean system.
Positive and negative aspects of products and services being sold online and offline
In the era of digitization, there have been many products and service which have taken the route
of digitalisation and have entered the world of e-commerce. This has also been a successful
venture for the companies in these times when there has been an increase significant in online
activities. The online sales have covered a number of products like ranging from retail sector of
products like grocery, personal care products, health care products, footwear, home appliances,
living room accessories, it also involved services like buying of insurance plan, opening of
savings account, applying for a loan through online banking etc. It has been seen that while there
has been an unequivocal response in case of some products being sold online but has been not so
successful in the traditional way of selling offline through stores or offices of institutions.
Positive aspects of online business and negative of offline
a) The customers can make purchases being at home and do not have to visit the stores. This
has helped in people staying safe at their homes and control of the pandemic. E-
commerce has entered the lives of individual in many spheres of options like home
appliances, daily need products such as soap, oil etc., products used as cosmetics, grocery
and kitchen items name the product and they are all there. In offline business, customer

has to spend time in travel and shopping and convenience is not there (Pham and
Ahammad, 2017).
b) Delivery services of these products have been swift and accurate in delivering products
timely and at the right location using GPS tracker systems in phones which has made
online shopping more convenient and easier.
c) Payment options being given at the time of purchase are both online as well as offline
when the delivery gets done. This has made payment mode being convenient as per the
wish of the customer.
d) Low set up costs of running a business offline: Speaking from business point of view,
cost of setting e-commerce website is less than offline business. It saves costs on staff,
salaries and other expenses like electricity, rent and other office expenses etc. It helps the
business to make up for the areas where there is need for more of operating capital. In
offline business, there is requirement of more capital for meeting operational costs.
e) Business ease of operating from anywhere: Ecommerce has allowed small scale
businesses to operate even when there is no space for office. There is some sort of
modification being done in space available and people can work out a business. Apart
from this, geographical restrictions have also been removed and people can see their
business operate through mobiles and internet (Pham and Ahammad, 2017).
f) Scalability: E-commerce is effective in determining the products being sold and checking
on whether the stock levels have increased. The successful products are categorised for
developing a bigger range of them to sell them online. This can allow the business growth
to happen in terms of sale, increase in customers and gains. Amazon is an example of
how online companies can grow without restrictions of offices and cashing on the
products which make a good sale. It takes more time to achieve this type of scalability in
offline business.
g) Availability of time throughout day: It is beneficial for both customer as well as the
business. Customer can view the website any time of the day and make mind as per wish
for buying the product while business owner can also benefit from customers booking
their products even after office hours which can be sold out the next day with delivery to
the customer. In offline, there is time limited and customer may not be able to make mind
only by coming once to the store.

Negative aspects of online business and positive of offline
a) Lack of credibleness: Comparing to offline business, online business cannot
generate the credibility which a business whom people can relate to as in a store.
Customers generate an attachment with the store location, layout and the mannerisms
of shop or store keeper which is found missing in online business (Kwon, Ha and
Kowal, 2017).
b) Customer grievance: In offline business, people can get to register complaint with
face- to-face interaction and thus get a satisfaction that their grievance has been
heard. While in online, there is the option of feedback and customer can register
complaint there, however it requires time to be solved and customer has to wait for
the complaint to be resolved.
Also, customer interaction with the sales executive forms a relation which binds
customer to the shop and it influences the customer to visit the shop again. This form
of customer relation is found missing in online service.
c) Saturation in market place: Unlike retailers who have competition present in local
forum with one or two stores nearby, online business have to compete with dozen
other websites who are selling the same type pf products. It then brings increase in
competition and demands investment through digital marketing techniques to get
attention of customer (Kwon, Ha and Kowal, 2017).
d) Service quality: Speaking of financial services like buying an insurance plan,
opening of savings account and applying for loan are decisions which if done by face-
to-face interaction builds a trust and customer can also ask relevant queries. However,
in online forum, customer has to read through all the documents before coming to a
decision. A bond as in with a wealth manager cannot be established and customer has
to take self-decision. Thus, people choose offline service regarding financial matters
mostly.
CONCLUSION
The report provided information about different tools of communication and collaboration in
businesses which helped them to survive the pandemic. The cloud storage and computing have

been discussed which have become prominent in way of doing business and their merits and
demerits with their application in business being discussed. The report highlighted the positives
and negatives in conducting a business online as well as offline. Merits and demerits of both the
options were highlighted in the explanation.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Zhang, Y. and et.al., 2019. Blockchain-based public integrity verification for cloud storage
against procrastinating auditors. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing.
Stieninger, M. and et.al., 2018. Factors influencing the organizational adoption of cloud
computing: a survey among cloud workers. International Journal of Information Systems
and Project Management. 6(1). pp.5-23.
Akomolafe, O. P. and Abodunrin, M. O., 2017. A hybrid cryptographic model for data storage in
mobile cloud computing. International Journal of Computer Network and Information
Security. 9(6). p.53.
Song, C. H., Kim, S. W. and Sohn, Y. W., 2020. Acceptance of public cloud storage services in
South Korea: A multi-group analysis. International Journal of Information
Management. 51. p.102035.
Maithili, K., Vinothkumar, V. and Latha, P., 2018. Analyzing the security mechanisms to
prevent unauthorized access in cloud and network security. Journal of Computational
and Theoretical Nanoscience. 15(6-7). pp.2059-2063.
Pham, T.S.H. and Ahammad, M.F., 2017. Antecedents and consequences of online customer
satisfaction: A holistic process perspective. Technological Forecasting and Social
Change, 124, pp.332-342.
Kwon, S., Ha, S. and Kowal, C., 2017. How online self-customization creates identification:
Antecedents and consequences of consumer-customized product identification and the
role of product involvement. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, pp.1-13.
Hult, G.T.M., Sharma, P.N., Morgeson III, F.V. and Zhang, Y., 2019. Antecedents and
consequences of customer satisfaction: do they differ across online and offline
purchases?. Journal of Retailing, 95(1), pp.10-23.
Smironva, E., Kiatkawsin, K., Lee, S.K., Kim, J. and Lee, C.H., 2020. Self-selection and non-
response biases in customers’ hotel ratings–a comparison of online and offline
ratings. Current Issues in Tourism. 23(10). pp.1191-1204.
1

Agarkhed, J. and Ashalatha, R., 2017, April. An efficient auditing scheme for data storage
security in cloud. In 2017 International Conference on Circuit, Power and Computing
Technologies (ICCPCT) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
Karthiban, K. and Smys, S., 2018, January. Privacy preserving approaches in cloud computing.
In 2018 2nd International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control (ICISC) (pp.
462-467). IEEE.
2