Old School Vision of Computers
As a child of the 60’s, I grew up watching Hollywood’s vision
of the computer of the future. I use to watch in amazement as
TV character would feed a question into a computer and an
obscure answer would immediately be spit out. I remember
playing “computer” with my grade school friends in the
neighborhood. I put a cardboard box over me with a light bulb
jammed in the middle of it with a slot in the front. I would
have my friends write a question on a piece of paper and slip
it threw the slot, and as I made ‘bleeping’ and ‘zooping’
noises, I replied to their questions about the universe, the
best a grade school child could.
I eventually outgrew the Hollywood vision of computers, or at
the very least, Hollywood’s vision for the computers of the
future became a little more realistic. Although, weebo the
reoccurring notion that computers will solve all our problems
won’t go away. As recently as five or six years ago, I
remember seeing a commercial promoting the Internet and how it
will magically solve all our woes, minus all the ‘bleeping’
and ‘zooping’ I remember from TV as a child.
Unfortunately, the promises of computers and the Internet have lagged behind our expectations of them, especially the expectations of small businesses. While large multinational corporations have been able to afford IT departments that could create specific applications to suite their needs, many small businesses were left out in the cold during the “computer revolution”. If a small business had a specific need or requirement with respects to automating their business process, their only choice was to hire a computer consultant, roidirectory who could take weeks, and possible months, to write their program, and charge a cost prohibitive amount for the service.
Unfortunately, the reality is that most small businesses have been left with the same applications and programs they’ve been using for the last 10 years. Computers for the small business resemble a typewriter of the past more than Hollywood’s image of the computer of the future. At best, some small companies might have an individual on their staff that could create elaborate Spreadsheets, but more times than not, huntingtime a computer was seen begrudgingly as items of unfulfilled promises.
The Second Coming of Computers
Over the last four or five years, there has been another “computer revolution”, and unlike the “computer revolution” of the mid to late 90’s, that mostly affected consumers and large businesses, this one is aimed at small businesses.
Threw the mid to late 90’s, innovators and visionary’s toted the Internet as the end-all-beat-all to everyone’s woes and problems with promises of a “new economy” and riches for all. Everyone was excited about the promise of computers, and everyone was eager to hop on the Internet dot com bandwagon. I’m sure most people know of someone that attempted to make money off the Internet, from that cousin that attempted to start a web site, to that neighbor that changed careers and went threw a technical training to learn programming or systems administration.
When the tech bust of 2000 happened, thousands of individuals that had hoped to reach their goals threw computers and the Internet, found themselves unemployed and ferociously competing for jobs. Within a matter of months, shayarism job postings that were only receiving two or three resumes were suddenly being flooded with resumes. Over the course of months it went from being an employee’s market to being an employers market.
The tragic events of 9/11 were what put the computer industry into a tailspin and ironically opened up the possibility of the second “computer revolution”. As corporations froze their budgets and killed projects, thousand more individuals found themselves unemployed. For roughly one and a half years, the computer industry seemed to die on the vine, and as individuals began to become despondent, they began to change careers again hoping to make an income that could support their families and life styles.
Fortunately, a certain percentage of individuals refused to give up on a career in the IT industry, and many programmers began to search for alternatives to being employed by large corporate IT departments. Some were bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and began writing programs for industries they were familiar with from past careers. As new entrepreneurs began with limited budgets and resources, many of these programs were targeted towards smaller businesses.
Is There a Limit to the Industries Affected?
I myself use to consult with Fortune 500 companies, have moved my practice to small and mid-sized corporations. Since doing so I’ve become amazed at the evolution I’ve seen in some of the most surprising industries. The industry I’m most surprised with is the pest control industry. I have an acquaintance that has a pest control business. Basically he catches rats and mice for the food service industries.
We were talking one day about the subject of a second “computer revolution”, when he began to share his own experience with it. Apparently, he had purchased an application that utilizes a bar code reader that records the status of his mice and rat traps. As he goes from customer to customer, he scans the traps and records the status of the trap, if it was empty, had a catch or even if the trap was gone. After he is done with his route for the day, he goes back to his office and downloads the data into his application and is able to compile trends at his customer’s sites.
With the use of this database, he no longer has to rely on his memory, guessing, or digging threw paper work to figure out what is going on at his customer’s sites. He can simply use his application and have his database tell him if his customer’s site is clean, infested or if the infestation has moved. Based on these reports, he is able to sell his customers more accurate services and products based on their individual needs. He claims his business has grown approximately 12% over the last two years threw the use of this product.
After I moved my practice to small and mid-sized business, I stumbled across a small application that I have since recommended to many of my customers in the Service Industry. I had a customer that is in the Chimney Sweep industry, and for their industry, the business is considered quite large with 9 trucks and approximately 30 employees. They had been experiencing many problems with issues like inventory, dispatching/scheduling, and invoicing they wished to correct threw the use of a customized application.
In an attempt to make the business more productive and profitable, techquisys they had contacted me with the desire my company write a program that would fulfill all their needs. Upon assessing their requirements I quickly analyzed that that it would be a more cost effective solution to identify an existing product that could fulfill all their needs. After a few days of searching I discovered an Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP) for small Service-oriented industries.
The application was written by a group of three programmers who found their jobs outsourced to India in 2002. One of them had experience in the HVAC industry prior to changing his career in the mid 90’s, after discovering himself unemployed but still with hopes of staying in the IT industry, he wrote the application with two of his former co-workers. For more info please visit these websites:-https://kaufencitalopram.com/ https://xpresschems.com/ http://www.aatowingnewcastle.com.au/