Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Abacus
yoey writes: "Blast from the past in an article at the Economist: There are those who do not believe in the desirability of introducing anything as esoteric as electronics into business routine at all. Others believe that there is a limited field for electronic methods, provided that they fit into, and do not disrupt, established business systems. But there is a third group ... who consider that a major revolution in office methods may be possible. This revolution would involve scrapping the greater part of the established punch card calculating routine and substituting a single 'electronic office' where the giant computor [sic] would perform internally all the calculations needed for a whole series of book-keeping operations, printing the final answer in and on whatever form was required."
in the end, when some assistant accountant accidentally puts in a 20' cat5 cable as $200.17.
one less set of eyes to notice the mistake, 45 mote minutes on the phone for me.
your jesus is another mans xebu. chew on that hypocrites.
Thats all very well and good, but what happens when this megomanic computer encounters technical difficulties? Or needs updgrading? Or just rebooting?
What OS could it possibly run? Anything by Microsoft is out for obvious reasons, and even UNIX based systems aren't up and fully running 100% of the time...
"Had a terrible day at the office, hunny, the computer went down and we all had to *think*!"
- Phil
This is excellent for those highly trained people needed to keep those things running. Even if someone invented a valve that was 100% reliable, tax laws change often enough that many operators will be needed to keep this computer up to date.
Kinda makes you wonder where we'll be in another 50 years. They couldn't imagine a small computer, what is it that we can't imagine now?
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
Excuse me?
If anything we are LACKING sufficient computing to
allow for efficient operation of our businesses.
I recently went to refinance my car ( at a bank that will remain nameless ). This bank held my original car loan. I spent an hour filling out
paperwork ( all of which had been filled out with
my original loan ), having the loan officer call my
insurance company to get my insurance information
( even though they had all of my insurance info on
file ), etc. All of this totally redundant. I had to come back the NEXT day because the guy
the loan officer calls to do credit checks and fax
them to him was busy.
All of this should have been accomplishable over the
web. There is NO reason that it had to be that
hard.
Oh yes, and then they proceeded to automagically
debit my old loan payment ( several days after
the old loan had been paid off in full by the new
loan ) because it takes about a week for the PAPER
to work it's way through channels.
It took almost six weeks for the bank to
restore order to my account ( I will not recount the full ins and outs of that, but it was bad ).
All of this was unecessary. If they had proper computer systems handling the back end of the bank I should have been able to go to the web page for my account arrange refinancing there in under 10 minutes.
Note that every one of the bank employees I dealt
with had a computer on their desk. What made this
experience so inefficient ( and frustrating ) was
not their lack of computers, but the lack of competent back end systems for them to access with those computers. That is were the efficiency comes.
People were also doing business for thousands of years before the slide-rule and the abacus. Or the internal-reservoir ink pen. Heck, the pencil, for that matter. People in the fertile crescent back in the days of Sumeria and Akkadia did business without the use of paper, and before that there were people doing business without even a form of written language. Does the fact that it was possible make it better? Do you want to physically perform search queries on the reams and reams of paper that would encompass Wal-Mart's database were it in physical format? Or perhaps you'd like to handle all the people who want instantaneous order-tracking? Oh, I know, you want to sit down in the basement and operate the switchboard for the company's 1200 internal telephones, right?
People also sucked the marrow from bones and ate raw meat for thousands and thousands of years before fire was put to use in food preperation. There're still places where people do it. Does that mean we should all rush out and chase a buffalo off a cliff?
See Sig append. Append Sig, append. Good Sig.
Overall I think that the application of computers has lead to a remarkable increase in efficiency. But I think you have to keep your business processes simple to realize true efficiencies. Computers do not handle exceptions well, they do not make judgements well. If your business processes are riddled with judgement calls and exceptions you might want to think about replacing your back end system with the good old fashionned pen and paper (or spreadsheet these days).
I recently interviewed at a company that had 400 employees. They had an terribly complicated year end bonus structure. They spent millions of dollars and many man years automating the bonus calculation process. For 400 people. Think about that for a minute. You could hire temps to do the calculations for the next 50 years for what it cost to automate the process. To top it off the rules change every year, forcing a recode of the calculation engine.
But the root cause is needless complexity. Whether you do it with computers or will people complexity adds cost, with usually very little benefit. I have seen executive bonus systems that jump through torturous calculations that end up in a net difference of $50 compared to a simple flat percentage scheme. People just don't think about why they are making rules, and what the cost of those rules will be to the business.
But anyway, my point was, past a certain level of complexity you are better off doing it with people, instead of building fragile and intracate rule based automated systems in an attempt to handle every eventuality.
-josh
Lyons must have had remarkably forward thinking management to go to all that trouble. Design and build their own 'computor' and basically invent business computing from the ground up.
Some achievement for a bakery and chain of tea shops!
"Information wants to be paid"