Before I get any hate letters, let me state that I'm an IT guy myself and I've been working on client and server based machines for many years now. I know the challenges that are posed by having to make things user friendly, but still keeping things running efficiently, safely and legitimately. I also understand though, that many "techy" type people don't always stay on top of their game. This is unacceptable. As IT people we must realize that our daily job is one that requires constant adaptation to the changing environment we work in.

If we were to imagine that instead of installing, fixing and maintaing computers we were for example involved in high speed car racing, we would certainly want to adapt to evolving technology over the years. Our driving style, our sense of juding speed, just about everything we did in such a high pressure situation would result in us wanting to always be on the latest standards when it comes to handling our equipment. Certainly this is somewhat of a stretch in terms of comparison, but the underlying point here is the same - both as a race car driver, and as an IT guy, we must adapt to the changing parameters of whatever situation we're dealing with. If a new operating system gets released, we don't necessarily have to immediatley be an expert on it but we certainly should read up on it, perhaps give it a test run and somehow get familiar with it in case we come in contact with it somehow in the future. 

Beyond the fact that tech people I feel have to be very pro active in terms of new technology in both hardware and software areas, they have to professional. Many companies out there rely on their IT department to take care of all their technology needs. I'm not talking about corporate type scenarios with hundreds of people, I'm talking about the more smaller businesses that possibly only have a few IT team members. In these cases, the responsibility for these people is high, to keep the company competitive in terms of the technology in use on premises.

Interestingly enough, many small businesses we've come in contact with are far behind when it comes to using technology efficiently and in most cases this is due to a lack of skills and understanding on the side of their IT departments. Depending on the type of business, a lacking IT department can mean lost dollars every day. We're dealing with a client currently that was systematically held back by their IT department for years. Where on the one hand side the client is to be blamed for lack oversight of its IT department and not demanding more changes sooner, the tech team members on their end delivered a performance which can only be described as embarassing. 

No systematic collection of data, no proper record keeping of events, problems or any other items of note. They have a inventory of products well over 2,500 items and they weren't using a database driven website to store this information. Beyond that, they had no way of comparing online to offline inventory, keeping track of their stock, import and exporting products records - I mean we're talking about some of the most inefficient work procedures I have ever seen. I actually couldn't grasp at first how they could successfully have been doing business, but I guess the basic structure of the business allowed for this inefficiency. 

The bottom line is that this business offered a great opportunity to implement a broad set of new routines that are going to help save the company extensive amounts of recources in terms of man hours, but also in terms of giving them more flexibilit over inventory management. In this case the inventory management and more specifically the ability to change large batches of prices in a very short amount of time, is going to make them more competitive. 

Where before price updates would take them several weeks if not months to complete, the new processes put in place by the Wacked Marketing team are speeding things up so drastically that updates will only take a few minutes. It's not often you can make such a strong impact on a company's work flow and where it was challenging at first, we welcome this type of challenge and are happy to say we're on our best way to having this company streamlined and equipped with greater control over their inventory.