Imagine you are the head of the sales department for a regional paper company. As part of your responsibility, you must select new hardware for your department, which consists of two administrative personnel, ten inside salespeople, six outside salespeople, and four inside sales executives. While selecting the new hardware, it is important to remember the types of employees that make up the office:

• Administrative personnel who create office memos and take care of paper work
• Inside salespeople who use a software as a service (SaaS) for sales and marketing software for customer contacts
• Outside salespeople that need access to customer contact information on the road (through the SaaS application) and send memos, emails, etc.
• Inside sales executives who are mostly internal but sometimes travel

Headquarters has allowed you to choose from the following new hardware: laptop computers, desktop computers, and tablets.

The administrative personnel and inside salespeople will receive one new piece of hardware, and outside sales-people and inside sales executives will receive two new pieces of hardware.

Provide your response:

(a) Are you in agreement with the distribution of the hardware for the roles noted here? How would you distribute the items (laptop computers, desktop computers, and tablets)?

(b) What are the pros and cons to the usage of laptops?

(c) What is the value of including a training session based on the assignment of these new devices? How can you ensure the individuals are using the hardware in a productive manner?

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Protocol:

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