Copies everywhere : Where is my master?

Making an international business travel has its own set of  hassles. My recent experience of interaction with travel  agencies threw open some important issues. These issues of   inefficient use of technology are the ones we face regularly   in enterprise arena.

Chaos

It all started with a case where responding to my request, the agency had to coordinate with another third party and  shared my information incorrect. My name was okay, but  email address and phone number were referring other person. I will not go into the chaos that I kept observing .. Until a point I made sure that person who initiated called me and acknowledged that she had made an error.

Paradoxically, this agency apparently with global presence had a tag line on how efficient they are with processes , technology etc.

Copies, copies everywhere. Where to find my master?

It was not difficult for me to imagine why such issues must be occurring. This case they had an email interface for dealing with users for business operation. For every request  I need to fill a form with information and send email. For example if I need ticket,insurance, forex, etc every time the same process. 

Consequence lot of information like name, email, phone, passport details etc were repeatedly  asked by different departments. Imagine this for every traveler and every occurrence of travel. Not only it causes user fatigue  in repeatedly sharing same data, but increases risk of failure with so many copies of same information floating around.

Sounds primitive, yet familiar? Can we relate this with our everyday life in enterprise world. The complex product and manufacturing data still lies in those silos of Excel, word and power points. These copies are being exchanged and business goes on with agony and frustration.

Misery of Email and Office Applications
“Computers to be designed to make our lives easier” was a quote I recollect from the movie Jobs I saw recently. No doubt Email was great invention and office applications made it so easy to create content.

However what have gotten ourselves into is the trap , a habit that is becoming more and more painful to the extent going back to paper world could be more efficient than what we are doing today.

What I learned?
While there is lot of promise in future technology of connected devices, cloud and mobility for consumers, Enterprise IT in particular struggles to free itself from the old paradigm. I hope not too far from today, we will be evolving to efficient use of computing devices in business world.

So next time you send an email or create Excel spread sheet, think twice whether you are creating copies for yourself and generating more chaos !

Regards,
Mahesh