IT-verktyg och kommunikationinom globala projekt

Sammanfattning: Many companies with expansion plans may eventually need to take a decision whether tomove parts of the organization abroad or not. One example is how Swedish companies’ placesits production in Asia where labor is cheaper, but at the same time wants to use Swedishengineers. The communication possibilities today makes it no longer necessary to travelacross the world to have a meeting, and questions can be answered in a matter of minutes.This means that a company that is spread out over the world still can communicate betweentheir employees.When participants in a project are spread out over the world, and can’t meet in person, it iseasy for problems to appear. As businesses have become more global, studies have been madeon what the implications could be. The goal of the studies is to find out what happens whenpeople can’t get to know each other well, and what this leads to in a global project.The work made on this report will lead to a deeper understanding of how global businessescommunicate in its projects. Knowledge on how to best carry out a major operation spreadacross various locations in the world, is an important feature in today's business. Being able tocoordinate the resources available, regardless of their location, saves time and money. In this report the theory on how communication is best handled and the consequences of poorcommunication have been analyzed with global projects in mind. The market's range of ITtools was examined to see which existing solutions there were to solve the problems that thetheory describes. This is then applied to the company Laird Technologies that has R&D inSweden and manufacturing in China. A case study of Laird Technologies has been performedto give insight into how employees are communicating in the company. An interview with theGM of the company’s Sweden office was carried out at the beginning of the project. Whatproblems they have solved and what weaknesses that still exist with their IT solutions wereaddressed at that interview. In some respects, the IT tools were used in the same way both locally and globally. Despitethe fact that people are sitting in the same office they often use instant messaging instead ofgoing over to the person’s office. To take advantage of IT tools in the best way, it appearedthat an initial physical contact must be established. The first contact generates an increase ofconfidence among the employees, and also makes the subsequent communication muchbetter.As more and more companies are expanding, the demand for technical aids forcommunication and cooperation is increasing sharply. The consequence is that thedevelopment of new technologies is making rapid progress and the face to face meetings canpossibly be replaced by IT tools in the future.