Memorandum (internal): are a standard paper document that gives a small message or reminders to a work colleague. Memos are delivered to pigeon holes in a central location or delivered to the departmental office.
Advantage:
guaranteed delivery and to be read,
quick to write a memo if on a pre-printed form.
in your hand so can be carried on you person.
cheap
Disadvantage:
needs the memos to be retrived from the posting location.
delivery is likely to be at set time during the day.
Agendas (internal): a document that holds information about the items to be discussed in a meeting that you are to attend.
Paper Forms (external or internal): forms are documents that clients will fill in that request a service from the company or gather information about a client.
Advantage: good because the forms can be completed with no more that a pen.
Disadvantage: entry of a form into a computer to be analysed.
Electronic Forms (external or internal): forms that are completed on a HTML webpage.
Advantage: don't need employees to enter data
Can be access 24-7
Disadvantage: can't veto the form entries.
Needs expensive equipment to run
Needs expert knowledge to design the HTML form and transfer data from the form to a central database
Faxes (external): a document that is used to transfer a paper document through a telephone wire.
E-mail (internal or external): the electronic version of a memorandum. Computerised document and images can also be attached to an e-mail. Problem is that is needs a computer network to get to the e-mails. If the computer network goes down then it will stop working.
Advantages: the fast delivery of message. Large documents can be attached, internet links, audio, video attachments.
Can be access 24-7
Disadvantages: needs expensive computer network technology to work compared to paper memo. If e-mail server is down, delivery of message will stop. Messages can be ignored or deleted by accident. Does not replace the use of paper because often important e-mails are subsequently printed out.
Telephone (internal or external): most large organisations have a telephone exchange. These telephone can reach all other phones in the building, plus by dialling 9 or 91, an outside line can be reached.
Advantages: a two way conversation
Quick and socialiable way of communicating.
Disadvantages: people can choose to ignore calls or claim that they are too busy