Impact of Information Technology on business operations of Tesco

This report analyzes the impact of information technology on the business operations of Tesco, including the different software used, ethical and social issues, networking technologies, and the importance of artificial intelligence.

Impact of Information Technology on
business operations of Tesco
Date of Submission:<Date of Submission>
Word Count:
I declare that this assignment is all my own work and that I have acknowledged all materials
used from the published or unpublished works of other people. All references have been duly
cited.
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Abstract
In the modern technological era it has become essential for businesses to make use of information
technology which very capital intensive. Today the businesses uses it for storage and processing of
the information. Due to the unstructured nature of data being generated by these businesses and the
data being too big to comprehend the use of artificial intelligence has become prominent tool for the
businesses to gain new insights into the business environment to maintain a competitive advantages.
The following paper looks at what the different technologies used by the business are and how they
help them in enhancing business operations.
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Table of Contents
1.Introduction.....................................................................................................................4
2. Literature Review ...........................................................................................................4
2.1 Different types of Software in general....................................................................................4
2.2 Ethics and Social Issues of using technology in general...........................................................5
2.3 Networking Technology, different types in general.................................................................5
2.4 The Artificial Intelligence and its importance in general..........................................................5
2.5 Software Development Life Cycle............................................................................................6
3. Analysis and Discussion..................................................................................................7
3.1 Software and its types used in the TESCO......................................................................7
3.2 Ethics and social issues in TESCO.............................................................................................7
3.3 Types of Networking Technologies that used in the selected business ...................................9
3.4 The importance of Artificial Intelligence in the selected business.........................................10
4. Conclusions...................................................................................................................11
5.References ....................................................................................................................12
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1.Introduction
Information technology is term used for storing , interlinks and overwriting of
information on any computer system its generally used for describing operations related to
bushinesses. The term Information Technology has far reaching consequences for businesses
in present times. which use it for creating data sets pertaining to business operation and
creating new insights from that information to conduct the business operations in a way
which gives them a competitive advantage over other companies. The company selected for
the analysis is Tesco Plc headquarters located at Welwyn Garden City, England its a British
fortune 500 company established by Jack Cohen in 1919. the following report shall account
for the different software which are indispensable in running of the company , the ethical and
social issues that surround the information technology, brief account of various networking
technology used , the use of Artificial intelligence in ensuring heightened business operation
and lastly the stages involved in development of a software.
2. Literature Review
To reap the entire benefits that arise from competitive economy enterprises use
Information technology as their most prominent tool to cut costs and amp up revenue.
According to to the book by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, and Nicole Forsgren published in 2018
The latest development in the field of technology is artificial intelligence which could
according to prominent mathematician and computer scientist Alan touring could mimic
humans so well that he made a test to differentiate them both. Today these artificial
intelligence bots are used for providing assistance to customers and have many advantages
over their human counterparts accordin to the book published in 2017 by Max Tegmark.
2.1 Different types of Software in general
According to George Beekman 2005 There are various types of software which need
to employed by the businesses such as software which can take care of accounting related to
taxation managing the salaries of employees and for the purpose of bookkeeping. In addition
they need these software for tracking the projects, for providing security to their tech based
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assets, for managing relationship with customers, for communicating and for payment
transactions and building websites for sales and promotional campaigns.
2.2 Ethics and Social Issues of using technology in general
According top Sheila Jasanoff 2016 Information technology is utilised by the different
enterprises to store, modify and engage a variety of data which assumes significance for the
companies to run their daily business activity. It has taken a frontal role in nearly all the
spheres of business activity be it the health sector ,the entertainment sector, or the sector of
education. The ever increasing use of information technology has given way for companies to
keep colossal size of data, which pertains to customers. This data invariably has prompted
certain questions about how such data will be employed by the enterprises And their effects
on people collectively if such data is not used ethically
2.3 Networking Technology, different types in general
According Dog lowe 2021there are these types of networks in general:
 Local Area Networking: This is the most common type of tech which engages
different local devices to exchange information among them as the name suggest the
device are in nearby vicinity of each other this form is used by the households and
business to link and connect variety of devices together(Mariotte, and Starr, 2018.)
 Personal network: this is the most basic method of connection in which a couple or
more devices are coordinating their respective operations for example the link
between printers and computers.
 Wireless Area Networking: this is similar to the local area networking barring one
condition that no cables are used the engagement between devices takes place
wirelessly.
2.4 The Artificial Intelligence and its importance in general
According to Doug rose AI in general could be used for:
 Management of Employees: The use of artificial intelligence provides huge
opportunity for the companies. They can free their employees from the jobs which
are necessary but do not require much cognitive element since they are monotonous
and repeating in nature. the use of artificial intelligence could eliminate the need for
doing such tasks. Making way for employees to use their imagination and cognition to
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come up with better strategies for improving the business.(Collins, . and Moons, ,
2019.)
 Data Based Determinations: the management will no longer have to rely on their gut
feeling or any such feeling which helps them determine an outcome. since they could
be based off of real set of data which can provide them with an unmatched degree of
certainty regarding their decisions the data could be purified and structured in way
which is conducive to a particular decision making. The degree of certainty provided
by the use of artificial intelligence means that company can mitigate the damages,
should such damages occur during the course of business. The companies would also
save money and time over the research and developmental aspects since models of the
product could be run to test out their viability.(Kaul, Enslin, and Gross, 2020)
2.5 Software Development Life Cycle
Acoordin to Steven Lipner and Michel Howard 2006 There are many different stages for
developing a software :
 Preparing : in this stage the kind of requirement which are needed to full fill in the
market through a software are gathered then a loose framework of the software is
made which determines if that particular software can plug the gap in the market.
(Agarwal, Gupta, and Choudhury, 2018, )
 Model making : this stage decides what platform the software will run upon and the
source code of the software gets developed.
 Developing stage: the software is expanded to meet the various requirements set out
at the planing phase. (DevOps.2018)
 Restrictive Access: in this stage the software access is expanded but still limited to be
tested out with the company and some selected developers to see what kind of bugs
need to be resolved before it is made available to the public.
 Open Access: in this stage anyone can download the software through various
platforms such as play store or windows or apple store
 Operating and modification: In this stage the software is already within public
domain and is being used but for assuring that the process is seamless it needs to be
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continually maintained and improved upon by rolling out newer versions.(Catalano,
2021)
3. Analysis and Discussion
3.1 Software and its types used in the TESCO
Tesco uses all of the above and more some of which are created by Tesco itself for ensuring
smooth operational capability some of which are provided below:
 Qmetrix - this takes care of the retail aspect such as point of sale, biometrics
 Springboards retail- This is cloud storage system used to increase sales and keep-
track of inventory.
 LS Nav- Tesco uses it in accounting and accessing data of the process of the business.
3.2 Ethics and social issues in TESCO
Ethical Considerations:
 Confidentiality of data – The amount of data collected by modern day organisation
is unparalleled. so its becomes a reasonable concern that such data should not get
leaked and fall into the wrong hands or in the hands of people who are not its intended
recipients. Especially in the wake of ever increasing cyber attacks which restrict or
steal the information. Towards what end the information which is collected by
companies may get used which is why there have been several legislation made in
various countries for punishing such information attacks. Secondly to what end this
sort of data is used by the firm who was not its intended recipient even if they have
obtained such information by the consent of the user who gives permission to use and
store the data in exchange of using their services. The privilege regarding disclosure
of such information if made to a party which intends to use such data in way that
doesn't respect the privacy of the individual or has ill intention, such as making
democratic institution weaker for instance what Cambridge Analytica did to the
election of United states. In which case they profiled their users and their tendency to
stick to a party and supplied them with false and defamatory information about the
candidates which swayed them not vote for those candidates.(Mâţă, , 2022)
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 Harm caused by use of technology :The harm through technology may
assume various variety starting from information denial attacks or ransomware
or viruses which render the computer systems non operational which hurts
companies financially and results in loss of information which has significant
value in terms of their monetary value and making modification which will
likely result in harm to the company or a person other forms of harm include
cyber bullying in which some very unruly people have access to internet and
can bully an individual without any consequences because they could be
situated on the a whole another locality and are not known due to the
anonymity provided by the internet. The modern deep fake technology
provides these unruly people to make a person say or do things which in
reality they have never done or said but to an ordinary observer they look as
real as daylight. Hacking of a company's official channel may result in stock
of that company going down because damaging information is posted on there.
It is because of these reasons companies pour heavily in securing their servers
and networks which results in loss of revenue as it is a continuous process they
have to continually keep upgrading to the latest security framework otherwise
the security may get compromised (du Chazaud, J.B. and Delisle, É., 2019.)
 SOCIAL CONCERNS:
 Cyber Aggression: Due top the modern form of communication being
seamless, and having unlimited reach. So does the aggression which skips
borders, aggression in form of having hatred for a person or a group due to
their attributes has peaked in recent times, more pressingly it exposes children
and adults to elements which are looking to disturb them. These people who
are responsible for such aggression are not held accountable for their actions
since they do it virtually and their identity or location can't be gathered. Unless
they are investigated by law enforcement agencies. Even when the law
enforcement agencies have taken cognizance of such actions they are not able
to do much because the aggressor lives in a entirely different jurisdiction.
Common example include the illegal call centres located in India which extort
money from individuals around the world by exploiting their vulnerability.
Such as old people who are not very tech savvy and dupe them of their hard
earned retirement money.(Ghandour, and Woodford, 2019)
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 Character assassination: The modern media allows for certain bad
elements of society to make incredibly inappropriate comments about
someone character which lowers their character in the eyes of the society. The
web having unlimited reach means anyone can read and take such attempts at
character assassination seriously and regard it as true information. Since
absence of fact checking and reputable source is not at the top of their minds
when they get information from social media this can result in them repeating
such claims to other people. Since these people live in different jurisdictions
they can't be prosecuted for such slander also no suit can be instituted against
them for recovering damages.
 Communication Collapse: It seems rather odd to imagine that the
technology which helps in connecting people around the world and has
unlimited reach can result in collapse of communication. However if observed
closely such phenomenon is already taking place as the close and interpersonal
communication which used to take place between family members and friends
is getting eroded day by day. The closeness which used to exist in the time
before technology is replaced with staring at screens, typing something which
one has heard earlier and not making any headway in their character building
since the factor of trust between people is lost to gaining more and more likes
on the social media platform.(Huda, M., 2018)
3.3 Types of Networking Technologies that used in the selected business
TESCO predominantly uses the following networking technology:
 Community Networking : in this form of networking a community such as a
university or a city exchanges information by the use of this method. The ownership
with city authorities in case of city wide area network and the university in case the
network is based in a campus area.(Hsu, 2021)
 Wide Networking area: this is commonly known as the internet. It has unlimited reach
meaning it can connect any two people on the planet provided they have the harware.
the people exercising control over such a network is different and varied according to
each locality.
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 Storage Networking: cloud storage concept is based on this technology which uses a
whole host of devices work as singular device which are oriented towards information
storage and extraction.
 Private networking: In the virtual space if one needs to hide or mask their identity
then this sort of networking is used. It reroutes the information which is requested
through a third party so that the identity of the person requesting such information is
not revealed .
3.4 The importance of Artificial Intelligence in the selected business
TESCO uses Artificial intelligence in the following business spheres
Shifting the customer handling: the online bots which are used by the companies are
already showing remarkable results since every sort of problem which has occurred or could
occur can be programmed into these bots and very accurate solutions could be given for those
problems which could not be done by the human handling the customers because they
generally lack the technical capability to do so combined with that is the ability of these bots
to learn and improve and engage with multiple customers all at once means it saves the
customers their valuable time and it saves the company their valuable capital since they do
not have to hire multiple people and train them.
Supply expediency: Its a huge logistical headache for the company like Tesco to
move their different products and track them together while knowing the perfect time to
move them. since warehousing is very costly affair the us of artificial intelligence could make
such decisions with relative ease Also take the burned on strained supply chains away. In
today's time companies use a method where they do not keep inventories of products rather
they order the product right at the moment they need it, so that cost could be reduced the use
of artificial intelligence could make these decisions very reliable and therefore expedite the
whole supply chain related issues.
Heightened Security: The aspects related to security to be improved upon by the
usage of artificial intelligence, as large amount of data could be filtered through to find the
gap in the security. Moreover government are using Artificial Intelligence to monitor
activities against the state which have a tendency to harm the society such as terrorist attack.
They make use of facial features to find out a singular person among huge amount of people
showing up on various cameras and filter out relevant calls among the colossal amount of
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calls going on at every moment. Further they use predictive algorithms which find a pattern
in attack to gather where the next attack might take place.
Heightened profits: Increasing the revenue stream is the most important aspect of
any business. since artificial intelligence can save them a lot of money on research and
provide better insights into the market, Along with reducing the cost of workforce. As the
workforce has been freed up from doing dull task they can achieve more in given period of
time, make better decisions to inculcate loyalty amongst their customers. All of which mean
that they can increase their profits exponentially(Mintz, and Brodie, 2019..)
4. Conclusions
The use of Information Technology has become so enmeshed with the businesses today that
nothing business operation could be done without it. In the report above Tesco was chosen to
be assessed in relation to different types of networking technology that it uses and the
businesses use in general. what software they use their policy regarding ethical use of data,
the variety of networking modes used by Tesco and other companies in general in
conjunction with how the use of machine learning could heighten their growth prospect and
lastly the various steps through which a software is made was discussed.
5.References
Books & Journals:
Mâţă, L. ed., 2022. Ethical Use of Information Technology in Higher Education. Springer
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Singapore.
Ghandour, A. and Woodford, B.J., 2019, December. Ethical Issues in Artificial Intelligence
in UAE. In 2019 International Arab Conference on Information Technology
(ACIT) (pp. 262-266). IEEE.
du Chazaud, J.B. and Delisle, É., 2019. The ethical issues of digital technology in the social
sector: Role and reflections of the CNIL. Vie sociale, (4), pp.65-76.
Huda, M., 2018. Empowering application strategy in the technology adoption: insights from
professional and ethical engagement. Journal of Science and Technology Policy
Management.
Mariotte, H. and Starr, T., 2018. Access and home networking technology standards. IEEE
Communications Standards Magazine, 2(1), pp.72-72.
Hsu, P.Y., 2021, January. Academic use of Social Networking Technology for English
Learning: Implementing Videotaped Peer Evaluation into English Speech Class.
In 2021 12th International Conference on E-Education, E-Business, E-Management,
and E-Learning (pp. 248-253).
Collins, G.S. and Moons, K.G., 2019. Reporting of artificial intelligence prediction
models. The Lancet, 393(10181), pp.1577-1579.
Kaul, V., Enslin, S. and Gross, S.A., 2020. History of artificial intelligence in
medicine. Gastrointestinal endoscopy, 92(4), pp.807-812.
Mintz, Y. and Brodie, R., 2019. Introduction to artificial intelligence in medicine. Minimally
Invasive Therapy & Allied Technologies, 28(2), pp.73-81.
Agarwal, A., Gupta, S. and Choudhury, T., 2018, June. Continuous and integrated software
development using DevOps. In 2018 International conference on advances in
computing and communication engineering (ICACCE) (pp. 290-293). IEEE.
Catalano, S., 2021. Analysis, modelling and optimization of a control algorithm for two
stages of a power electronic converter implemented on a subway rolling
stock (Doctoral dissertation, Politecnico di Torino).
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