Tool Man

Intro: John is a sales representative selling tools to garden centres and DIY stores. He travels over 1000 miles a week to see new and existing clients. For the past 20 years he has carried around a large diary, an address book, a large road atlas and numerous A-Zs as well as numerous small coins for phones. He prides himself on his punctuality, but even he is occasionally late as he struggles to find a new client or is delayed by traffic. He always takes along a calculator, and a bulky sales catalogue with the latest price lists and order forms. He is usually on the road four days a week, six hours a day and spends every Friday in the office ensuring all his administration and sales are handled properly. He has always said he quite likes the time spend in his car between appointments, as it is his time when he can listen to CDs undisturbed.

Tasks: John could use a PDA (personal digital assistant) instead of his diary, address book and road atlas as the PDA has the nessary to log this information down. He can also log onto the internet and use the road atlas' online which saves space. On these websites, he could also look up potential traffic jams ahead and therefore find a different route. He could also look up up to date prices online so he could stay in competetion easily. This will mean he can look up a wide range of prices so that he doesn't need alot of catalogues in his van. He could easily access the internet through wireless. Like the PDA, a laptop would be handy if he needed to write any long pieces of writing meaning he could write diary entries in Word and then saved onto his hardrive so he can easily access it if needed. He could also use a GPS to track were he is. This would re-enhance the need not to use the road atlas as the GPS finds your exact location very quickly. He could have a GPS on his mobile phone. He could then save his address book onto his mobile phone as it is a more portable address book as a physical address book. Calculators are commonly on Laptops and Mobile Phones so he could encorperate this into his mobile phone or laptop. He could also use his laptop in the office so he has all the details from his orders in a more portable way than if he had a normal computer.

Although I.C.T. has many different uses which John can use, if the internet was to be down for a day, he wouldn't be able to access vital information which could inhibit his orders. Also, alot of the I.C.T. uses need charging with a battery. If he didn't purchase a charger for the car, his I.C.T. could run out of batteries and therefore inhibit his orders. Also, there is a cost issue involved as most of the I.C.T. costs alot of money such as the laptop and PDA. Also mobile phones arn't cheap aswell. He also may not know how to use these I.C.T. as he is used to paper copys. So it may be wise for him to keep a paper copy somewere as a back up but not for everyday use.