Tool Man:

"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.

State how john could use the following ICT to change and hopefully improve his working style: PDA, GPS, Laptop, software, Mobile phone, and the internet."

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John has too much phyical stuff with him. A-Z's and roadmaps etc. If he bought a Laptop he could use the internet to look up a routefinder or map. To get rid of the coins for phonecalls, he could use a instant messaging program or even better; Skype. (www.skype.com) Skype gives free calls to anyone who has Skype. He could use this to save money and time stopping at phone boxes to call people. E-mail would also suffice. With a GPS John could put it in the car, type in the clients location and follow the route to the client. This would get rid of all the maps. Using a PDA would be useful as its basically a small electronic diary. It would save space and money of new diaries. Also whatever he notes down can be edited. With a mobline phone he could, again, stop using loose coins and phone clients while on the move. Also if there is an emergancy he can call for help. With the Interent on a Laptop he could look at the newest items in the catalogue, online. This would save him from taking huge catalogues with him everywere.

The only problems of being 100% technology reliant is that, if John gets to a meeting / client and his laptop won't work, he cannot sell to the client because all his catalogues, referances and nots are on it. Having backups on paper would help the situation.