“War is 90% information.”
(War is 90% information)
(Napoleon Bonaparte)
“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.”
(You can have data without information, but you can’t have information without data)
Daniel Keys Moran, American Computer Programmer

Office Administration is one of the fields of science that should be the most “busy” in the last two decades. Why not? The disruption of technology and information that occurred at the beginning of the 21st century has forced the meaning of “office” (office/workplace) to be redefined. What we know as “office” in the 20th century, today some of it is still relevant, but the other half is irrelevant. In various office administration textbooks, we know the term “office” comes from the Dutch language, namely kantoor, which means a room in which to work, place of agency and others. Meanwhile, according to the Big Indonesian Dictionary (KBBI), an office is defined as a hall (building, house, room) where work is taken care of or also called a workplace.

Today, we know how many organizations/companies no longer use buildings as offices. Or even if you still use the building, it is only for production or operational activities. Only as a “back office”. Meanwhile, many marketing and public relations activities no longer need buildings. In fact, many companies have long recruited their employees fully online.

Indeed, to this day corporate offices around the world, including in Indonesia, are not fully digital yet. There are still many organizations/companies that still need a physical office, because maybe the supply chain has to be done physically. Especially in manufacturing industries, agricultural industries and the like. However, for service industries, such as consulting services, education, training, banking, ticket purchasing services and the like, many of them have substituted their physical offices for digital offices. For example, skillsshare.com (online learning sites and applications) and booking.com (online hotel ticket booking sites and applications), two websites where almost all of their business activities are carried out digitally. Apart from this example, there are many companies, both in Indonesia and abroad, that use digital offices to carry out their business operations.

Normatively, the purpose of the office is to provide communication and recording services. While the functions of the office include receiving information, recording information, managing information, providing information and protecting company assets. From this we can conclude that the most important purpose and function of the office is related to information and communication. In a traditional office, the activities of receiving, recording, managing and providing information can still be done manually because the volume (amount) is still limited.

Today, most businesses are faced with an enormous volume of information. Starting from information about product profiles to information about customer profiles. The large volume of information certainly cannot be handled by traditional administrative methods. Many “post-modern” companies in the 21st century have begun to take advantage of so-called Big Data in managing their communications and information.