CHAPTER ONE

1.0       INTRODUCTION

1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

          In today’s national and international buiness world, information is a price less commodity, what ever form it takes, without up – to the minutes, accurate information, most commercial organization would quickly  founder.

Such business offices serve as hubs or centers of information which take in, process, store and relay data and messages in a host of situations, financing, selling, building, making, servicing or advising – so as to to enable all sorts of people to function in their jobs, ranging from senior managers planning company activities over the next five years to stop assistants quering the current retail price of a product.

While manual and paper-based system of information processing are still much in use, in the form of book, diaries, letters, invoices and so on, more and more office facilities are today being undertaken by electronic and compute-based technology.      

Information technology, both in the industry and business world is resourceful. In the 1905s, business embarked on the first widespread use of computer primarily as tools for recording and processing accounting transactions.

          Thus information technology has only really been part of business for about the last 40 years. Nonetheless, information technology  is one of the most important resources in today’s business environment. But what exactly is information technology.

Aronu (1999) defines information technology as the combination of two technologies; computing and telecommunication (the cornerstone of information technology and the main purpose of which is to transmit representation of information (signals) between remote locations).