Here's a true story which I find absolutely astounding.
In some huge businesses and government departments there are modern servers which, for the sake of saving space, do not have a monitor attached to them. If a problem occurs, this particular IT company is called to attend and must fix the problem, within a stated period or the IT company may face financial penalties. The IT company does not provide its engineers with a laptop computer so here's the question: "How does the engineer look at the server to see what the problem is if he doesn't have a screen to plug in?" Answer: He can't. So the engineer can't do his job, the IT company can't fix the problem within the contractual time period, and the IT company now faces financial penalties and loses profit.
Here's another true story about the same company.
I think everybody would agree that email and internet is an essential part of today's business and, to remain competitive, nobody can afford not to have this service - given the recent postal disputes we've suffered this is still very fresh in my mind. I'm sure in your office if you're expected to communicate with email that you would be given an internet service provider (ISP) and a computer, laptop, pda or smart phone with which to connect and read your mail and deal with any attachments. But this particular IT company disagrees with that philosophy for some reason. They send vital information such as security passwords, manuals, software build information via email, but they seem to have forgotten that their field engineers (the people who are the company's revenue earners) are not given any device to receive the mail, nor are they provided with any sort of internet connection.
An engineer asked his line manager "how do you expect me to read this message, download the file and obtain this software?" and the response was ... wait for it ... "Ask the customer for a computer". I mean, would you?
So we've established that the engineers do not have a laptop computer, they do not have any internet connection available to them. So how do they communicate and get their information from the company? They use the telephone of course. So rather than expend money on a neat little device such as a cost effective pda or smartphone with GPRS, this particular IT company prefers to waste money on lots and lots man hours of people talking on the telphone all day. Talk about re-inventing the wheel.
This particlar IT company shall not be named in this blog. It's ludicrous that it is listed on the stock market. As soon as the shares are available to be sold they will be - before the company sinks.
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2 comments:
They could save even more money giving their engineers a rail card or bus pass.
Or why not use the canals and a canoe?
Just think of the environmental benefits?
And instead of phones, a series of tins cans and string would be a great way of both recycling and avoiding both phone costs and unnecessary electricity.
And if they used wind-up laptops, perhaps they could use bicycles so the engineer could travel to each job and at the same time be charging up their battery.
In fact, because I work in an IT company, i'll get cracking on a special contract for Manchester companies with amazing discounts if the engineer and response time is based upon us using the ship canal and a dinghy.
hah - that's great Ian. I was venting spleen at the time of writing. It's my husband's employer who are the "bad guys" and when he starts moaning I'm supposed to just sit and listen. But it is a really frustrating situation.
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