It’s the Data, Stupid!

Although as a maintenance man I had little contact with the programmers, who actually communicated with the computer, I did gain some basic knowledge about what a computer could do and how it did it. Years later this knowledge resulted in some major changes in my life.

After leaving the Air Force I worked for a while in Thailand and later moved to Indonesia, where I joined a small company that was providing services to the oil industry.

Initially I worked at various field projects but by the end of the 1970s, the company had grown so large that a new division, the Operations Division, was formed to bring all of the various field projects, which were now spread from one end of Indonesia to the other, under one manager and I was temporally assigned to the new division to help develop procedures.

The new division was greatly resented by the field project managers, who had previously been answerable only to the owners of the company. Now they were expected to take orders from the new operations manager, who they considered an upstart and, to add insult to injury, the highly individualistic project managers were expected to conform with the new corporate procedures we were busily developing.

In short, there was a tremendous amount of animosity between the project managers and the Operations Division.

As an indication of their independence, the project managers had always insisted on carrying out their own logistics support. They ordered all their own supplies, decided what vendors to buy from and how much to pay, called the home office to complain about deliveries and in general acted like little independent kingdoms.

Almost as soon as I joined the Operations Division, the task of coordinating logistics was made one of my responsibilities and I was immediately in hot water. While the projects managers refused to cooperate with the Division Manager, they totally ignored me.

I had only one advantage, I had access to the purchasing department and I made sure that no purchase was made without my knowledge. I might not have been able to control the projects but I could keep track of what they did. I even computerized the system.

Since my Air Force days, computers had grown simpler and cheaper, until it had become possible for an individual to actually own his own computer. And when I discovered the Apple II computer I bought one, more than a decade after my first exposure to computers.

Now I was so overloaded at work trying to keep track of purchasing that I brought my personal Apple II into the office and developed a database program to keep track of every purchase made by the company.

Several months after I instituted my procurement tracking system, the Field Managers literally rose in revolt and demanded that the company's owners convene a meeting at which the field managers were determined to prove that the Operations Division was unnecessary and the company should revert to the old ways of doing business.

The Operations Division manager called a meeting to decide how best to defend the division (and ultimately our jobs) and I suggested that I research the several month's worth of procurement records I had computerized.

I spent most of the next day and night printing out procurement records in every possible permutation in the hope of finding anything we could use to defend the division - and I found it.

I discovered that one project had procured enough silverware to outfit a 5-star hotel; another had purchased more paint then the rest of the company combined; another had, apparently, bought enough eight-inch wrenches to outfit the company several times over and another project had ordered the same number and quantity of truck batteries every Monday morning for the past three months.

In short, there was fishy business in the projects and I had the computer printouts to prove it.

It goes without saying that when the meeting was held and the Operations Manager presented proof that there was hanky-panky in the projects, the Operations Division emerged supreme.

A number of the worst offenders in the projects left the company and the Operations Division became the de facto controlling agency for all projects, and I got to buy more Apples for the office.

With the new computers, we implemented word processing and the use of spreadsheets; we computerized the Finance Division, one result of which was to reduce the time required for annual tax preparation from one month to one week; we started keeping project records so that it was easier to evaluate the progress of each job.

For the first time in the history of the company, it was possible to get accurate and timely information about almost everything we did, from gasoline consumption of company vehicles, to how much money Project X had made to date.

As a result of improvements in the company's efficiency I was promoted to what was effectively IT Manager of the company (although the title had not yet been coined) and ultimately retired, in 1991, as Operations Division Manager with a very nice profit sharing scheme which allows me to take sailing holidays in Phuket.

What can you learn from this tale of corporate intrigue?

Remember the silverware? Do what I did and control the data. Get all the data you can and evaluate it every way possible and then get more data. When you can show the management how to cut costs, save money or increase profits, fame and fortune will be yours and you too will be able to go sailing in Phuket.