Common tasks such as employee collaboration on projects, provisioning, and holding meetings can take less time and be much less expensive. For example, a managing editor, associate editors, writers, and artists may need to work together on a publication. With a computer network they can work on the same electronic files, each from their own computers, without copying or transferring files from a floppy disk. All the new employee's information can be entered into one terminal, and various departments such as properties, payroll, and security will receive that new information automatically. When an employee leaves the company, the process can be reversed just as easily.
Networks also make holding meetings more efficient.
The meeting can be held over the network through a teleconferencing session, thus eliminating the travel cost for those employees at remote sites. The attendees can simultaneously view and edit the same document and instantaneously view each other's changes as they are made. Moreover, they can do this without worrying about accidentally changing or deleting the work of others. Open networking products enable you to work on the type of computer best suited to your job requirements without encountering compatibility problems. They also allow you to choose the system that best works in your environment without sacrificing interoperability with other companies' systems.