Telecommuting Industry Analysis

The assignment content discusses the job analysis, description, and selection process of Ourtel Solutions, a company that offers telecommuting services to its employees. The report highlights the challenges faced by the company, including communication, productivity tracking, trust, and maintaining a unified company culture. To overcome these challenges, the company is recommended to trust its employees, use tools for performance tracking, and arrange regular get-togethers for remote employees. The report concludes that telecommuting can bring numerous benefits, but it also requires careful planning and management.

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Strategic Information System

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Executive Summary
Ourtel Solution is a business of telecommuting. Ourtel Solutions developed a model known
as Power on phone (POP). This model includes a virtual team. The virtual team contains
home based tele agents. The main objective of Ourtel is giving maximum returns to the
client. Ourtel believes in building a healthy relationship with customers by providing them
loyalty, satisfaction and profitability. Ourtel uses internet based technologies to provide the
services. Ourtel follows multi-stage approach. Ourtel relies upon latest cloud technology.
Most of the Australian businesses are using telecommuting for their recruitment, marketing,
training and administration.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Organizational structure.............................................................................................................5
Operational problems.................................................................................................................6
Most likely system acquisition method......................................................................................6
Flowchart of sales procedure.....................................................................................................7
Possible frauds...........................................................................................................................8
Development and adoption of software.....................................................................................8
Current market Analysis............................................................................................................8
Challenges and recommendations..............................................................................................9
Challenges..............................................................................................................................9
Recommendations................................................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
This report includes detailed analysis of Ourtel Solutions. It is a teleworking company. This
company gives employment to the people in remote areas. With the help of teleworking, a
person can work from anywhere anytime. Now, there is no need to go to office and work.
One can work from his or her home also. This report describes the organizational structure of
the company, the problems that may arise due to the structure of the system, most suitable
system that the company needs to acquire, flowchart of sales procedure, risk of fraud possible
and the challenges faced by the users and the measures recommended to the company
(Asgari, et al., 2016).

FlyingHotel
Library
Driving
Tele Conferencing
Client’s office
Headquarters Distributed offices Off-premise
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Organizational structure
Organization structure refers to the gathering of people for the achievement of common
objective.
Above is the structure of a telecommuting organization. Telecommuting means working from
anywhere and transferring the data through internet. It allows the employees to work in any
kind of situation. The devices used in telecommuting include computers and word processors,
teletypewriters, hybrid communication devices, fax machine, audio teleconferencing
equipment, video teleconferencing machine etc (Gordon, 2015).
Operational problems
The employees are working in a team in Ourtel Solutions. There are many issues that are
related to the structure of the organization. The major issue is maintaining collaboration and
co-ordination among the units because there are a number of small units in Ourtel Solutions.

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Organization structure includes organizational policies for the operation, control and co-
ordination of the activities (Marabelli and Galliers, 2017). Another problem is related to lack
of oversight which means it is not possible to directly supervise the tele workers. There is a
security problem in this type of organizational structure because procedures need to be
implemented for the employees to access while keeping out unwanted intruders. The
employees feel isolated. Such organizational structure results in inability of brainstorming
due to the lack of face-to-face contact in telecommuting. The organizational structure leads to
diminishing productivity because some employees show less productivity when they are
working from home (Masuda, et al., 2017).
Most likely system acquisition method
An Ourtel Solution is a technology based company. So, Ourtel is required to acquire a system
which is directly related to technology and is capable of integrating all the organizational
activities. For Ourtel Solutions, Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the most suitable
system. Enterprise resource planning software helps the company in the integration of
organizational activities and helps to regulate the back office functions which are related to
the technology (McKnight, et al., 2017). ERP software helps the company in marketing and
sales. Marketing and sales are the core areas of Ourtel Solutions. Another name of ERP is
business management software. It takes into account all the activities of the business. It will
also helps in updating the technology and removing the obsolete software. ERP analyse the
production capacity of the company. Though ERP integrates all the organizational systems
still it facilitates error free transaction.
Flowchart of sales procedure

Training required?
Employ Staff?
Skills achieved?
Consider
Job
analysis
Job
description
Advertise
vacancy
internally or
externally
Conduct
selection
process
Move current
employee to new
position
Evaluate
training
outcome
Select and
appoint
employee
Induction process
Undertake
training needs
and analysis
Monitor performance
Appraise performance
Plan and
conduct
individual or
group training
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
NN
N
Review reward strategies and remuneration
Engage contractor
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New
position
required
Recruit new person?
Sets goals
and
performance
expectations

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Possible frauds
Frauds can be done more easily by using computers rather than manually. Ourtel Solutions
rely on computerized system of working. So, the chances of fraud increase. The fraud can be
done by the employees for their personal benefits. The company is required to analyse the
behaviour of employees from time to time. For example, if an employee is dissatisfied with
the owner then this will give him a reason to commit fraud. Another fraud is related to the
theft of data (Peppard and Ward, 2016). The data of the company can be stored in the
computer. The risk of call tracing is also there because the company is engaged in
telecommuting. Allowing the employees to work from the remote locations carries a number
of risks such as risk of information, performance management, ICT security and team
cohesion.
Development and adoption of software
Ourtel Solution is using MYOB accounting software. MYOB stands for Mind your own
business. MYOB is known for its easy accessibility. The MYOB software is also giving a 30
days trial facility. MYOB helps in managing the accounts and boost profitability. MYOB is
the most commonly used cloud accounting software. The functions of MYOB includes
generating pay slip and payroll reporting, financial statements reporting, accounts chart, bank
reconciliation, database tracking of customer and supplier, ledger listing and multi level
reporting (Jenkins,et al., 2016). MYOB provides the features of changing the language and
displays all the information including charts and diagrams in the language which is selected
by the user.
Current market Analysis
At least 24% of the workers in Australia are working from their home. Out of all the people
working from home, around 71% people are working less than 10 hours in a week and only
5% of people are working majority of their time from home. The people who are working for

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less than 10 hours a week are those people who work from home in addition to their normal
at-work employment. The telework is provided in four categories i.e. home-based work, day
extender work, out posed work and ad hoc work. In home-based work, the employees can log
in to IP Australia’s computer but they are allowed to work within a specified commuting
distance. They have to come to office on regular or agreed basis. In day extender work, the
employees can work during normal working hours by logging ion to IP Australia and then
they are allowed to log in again to do the additional work from home. In out posed work,
employees are allowed to log in to IP Australia and work from home permanently. In ad-hoc
work, the employees are allowed to work for a short period of time on irregular basis.
Challenges and recommendations
Challenges
The first major challenge is communication. It is easy to communicate with the employees in
the office and the employees in the office are always available on their desks whenever
needed but getting the employees who are working from home it not so easy. In the office,
face-to-face communication is available which is lacking in case of teleworkers (Vander Elst,
et al., 2017). Another challenge is tracking of productivity. In case of remote employees, it is
difficult for the company to track the work done by the employees in each day because the
company is not able to see them. Some remote employees are self-motivated but few remote
employees can take advantage of this. The trust on employees is also a challenge for the users
of telecommuting. Trusting the employees that they are doing the same thing for which the
company is paying them is a big challenge for the company. The last challenge is related to a
unified company culture. Sometimes the employees feel isolated by working in the remote
areas because they work from home sitting alone (Sligo, et al., 2017). They are not able to
enjoy the environment of the office.

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Recommendations
It is recommended that the company should try to trust on the employees because this will
bring motivation among the employees. The company is required to arrange get together for
the remote employees in the office once in a month or once in 15 days. So that they cannot
feel isolated and they are able to take the advantage of the environment of the office
(Soomro, et al., 2016). For the productivity, the company is required to use the tools that can
track the performance of the employees and should have the systems to calculate the metrics
of its business. For the problem of communication, it is recommended that the workers
should be aware about when and how to connect with each other.

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Conclusion
It is concluded that telecommunity industry is growing day by day because it is giving the
opportunity of home based jobs. Telecommuting helps in saving the time, money and
environment. This report has described in detail the sales procedure and the operational
structure of Ourtel Solutions. Now, people can work by sitting in their homes rather than
wasting hours in the traffic to reach office. The emotional and physical stress of the commute
took a toll on a worker’s productivity. This report also explained the problems in
telecommuting like the issues related to communication, difficulty in identifying the
productivity of employees etc. and at the same time some recommendations are also
suggested to the company to cope up with these challenges.

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References
Asgari, H., Jin, X. and Du, Y. (2016) Examination of the impacts of telecommuting on the
time use of nonmandatory activities, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the
Transportation Research Board, (2566), pp.83-92.
Gordon, H. (2015) Strategic Utilization of Information Systems in Small Business. IGI
Global.
Jenkins, S., Bhanugopan, R. and Lockhart, P. (2016) A Framework for Optimizing Work–
Life Balance Practices in Australia: Perceived Options for Employee Support, Journal of
Employment Counseling, 53(3), pp.112-129.
Marabelli, M. and Galliers, R.D. (2017) A reflection on information systems strategizing: the
role of power and everyday practices, Information Systems Journal, 27(3), pp.347-366.
Masuda, A.D., Masuda, A.D., Holtschlag, C., Holtschlag, C., Nicklin, J.M. and Nicklin, J.M.
(2017) Why the availability of telecommuting matters: The effects of telecommuting on
engagement via goal pursuit, Career Development International, 22(2), pp.200-219.
McKnight, D.H., Lankton, N.K., Nicolaou, A. and Price, J. (2017) Distinguishing the effects
of B2B information quality, system quality, and service outcome quality on trust and distrust,
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 26(2), pp.118-141.
Peppard, J. and Ward, J. (2016) The strategic management of information systems: Building a
digital strategy. USA: John Wiley & Sons.
Sligo, J., Gauld, R., Roberts, V. and Villa, L. (2017) A literature review for large-scale health
information system project planning, implementation and evaluation, International journal
of medical informatics, 97, pp.86-97.
Soomro, Z.A., Shah, M.H. and Ahmed, J. (2016) Information security management needs
more holistic approach: A literature review, International Journal of Information
Management, 36(2), pp.215-225.

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Vander Elst, T., Verhoogen, R., Sercu, M., Van den Broeck, A., Baillien, E. and Godderis, L.
(2017) Not Extent of Telecommuting, But Job Characteristics as Proximal Predictors of
Work-Related Well-Being, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.