CHAPTER 177 ENGINEERING THE GREAT STRONG POINTS DATABASE 1998 - 1998
When I reported to Sales Support, there were five of us in the Division. Yes, this dinky little group was actually considered a Division.
Deposit Services was a division. At its height during my time there it had 275 employees. But as is often said, size doesn’t matter.
Dave Ernst was a Vice-president and had replaced Fil Sherry in this position (although Fil had not been a vice-president when he was over Sales Support, just a cent intern passed around willy-nilly). Deborah Williams was an Assistant Vice-president and her background was Personnel (Oh gee I am so sorry I mean Human Resources! God forbid we call it what it is or use a name containing the word “Person”. Isn’t it funny how the term “Human Resources” actually dehumanizes the employee – just another resource, like copy machines and envelops.) Deborah was charged with designing the modules of the Strong Points program and overseeing the training.
Joyce Babiarz (on the right in the photo) was the administrator of
an application called Gemini. Gemini was supposed to give the sales people throughout the bank a tool to track their contacts, appointments and sales, when you could get them to use it. Joyce had come to the bank before I did, although she looked like she was about twenty years old and had a speaking voice that sounded like a twelve year old. I had first met Joyce in the early eighties when she was the techie who set up your PC.
The other person in the unit was Kathy, the only Indian in this tribe of Chiefs. She worked part time, did all the data entry and acted as receptionist for us.
As much as I dreaded this new job, it turned out to be great (at least during that year). Dave was as easy to work with as Walt and in such a small group, I got to work very closely with them and we both liked to try new things and to blue sky it and get all enthusiastic about ideas. In fact, Dave introduced me to the work of Stephen Hawking and gave me a copy of Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time. Each of us in the group also had autonomy over our area. As I stated previously, my office was very nice. See we were on the Street floor of the headquarters, just behind the lobby bank branch and my office had originally been designed for use by a banking officer dealing with the customer, so the office had been designed to impress the public.
Even better, our little division reported directly to Bob Harra, the new President of the bank. We were like royal family. We could get whatever we needed. When I came, there was no PC for me yet. I was able to put in my own order and I ordered and got the top of the line PC of the day. By that I mean in speed and memory and storage capacity, not the brand. All the bank’s PCs were Compaq.
I was a great user of blue three-ring binders as a means of organization of information and quick reference. I asked for a bookcase to hold my binders. In the past when I asked for a bookcase, Purchasing would go rummage about in a store room looking for one and I would get what they could fine, usually something with a lot of scratches and dings. This time someone came down from purchasing and handed me a packet. I opened it up and it had wood samples in. What kind of wood did I want for my bookcase, what color, what this, what that. I never was able to get use to this. I just wanted something to hold my binders.
Information Technology). George was a mainframe man who didn’t think the PC would ever have a place in business. He viewed it as some kind of toy. Still, he did set up an experimental area called Office Automation and they bought four Apples. (Apple was really the only thing out there yet.) Anyone in the bank could use these, but you had to sign up for time. They had VisiCalc and WordPerfect on them. I was there as much as I could get time, but it was so limiting, and everything you did, you had to save to those 5 ¼ floppy disks, which really didn’t hold much. The person that was put in charge of Office Automation was Gail Trench. She was very rigid and was certain that Apple would always be the only small computer business.
I went to Walt and said if these computers were caught on we would see if Apple could keep the market when the big boys like IBM jump in. IBM did jump in and immediately sprained its ankle. For some reason IBM couldn’t get a good handle on marketplace, but their box, the PC did in the hands of others, such as Compaq. I think after two years the Apples were gone and Compaqs were in at WTC. About six months after that Gail was gone. Within a few years the PC dominated around the place and were everywhere.
By the time the Apples whet bye-bye, I had a PC at work, one of the first, if not the first, in the bank to have one on their own desk. All those years, I always had the biggest and baddest machine in the bank, although the bank always dragged its feet on technology and always went for the least capable boxes. Of course, I always had a bigger box at home.
My first home computer was an Atari. Yes, an Atari. It couldn’t do a lot, such as print. You could save your work to tape cassettes, which were slow to use. There was no monitor; it hooked up to your TV. You could play Atari games on it naturally, but you could also write programs in Basic. You could get some little bookkeeping applications, too. I taught myself Basic using it and wrote a couple very rudimentary games. Then I went out and got an Apple II. This didn’t have a lot either, but a lot more than the Atari. It had a monitor and two disk drives using the 3-½ floppies for storage. No hard drive for storage. It also had a printer. It came with AppleWorks, which had a combination of word processing, spreadsheet and database.
I eventually moved to PCs and have had three Compaqs since. I always liked the Apples. They were easy to use, and always seemed ahead of the PC world, but rare in business and incompatible with what I had at work, so I ended up switching loyalties.
Back to my story: Our little group worked closely together on the Strong Points program. I was sent to Access classes, although these classes only skimmed the surface. I really learned Access by buying the program and installing it at home. I then sat down and went straight through the manual. Well, I did build the Strong Points database, did get the data out of the old “BRAG” dbase system, and did save Dave’s rear end. Once more I had a job I liked and people I enjoyed working with. Deborah and I became good friends and still are.
And then the world shook again and things changed; another reorganization at the top of the house. Marketing was removed from the Administration Department and made it’s own Department and named to be the first Senior Manager Marketing department head was Rita Turner, the first female Senior Manager of Wilmington Trust. And Sales Support was removed from Bob Harra and given to Rita Turner. The marketing section called Marketing Research was also now to report to Dave Ernst. Jim Wadsworth managed this section. Now Jim and his assistant, Nathan Hardy, joined our little group at staff meetings
I had known Jim a while. I first got to know him when I was Project Manager over the development and institution of Self-Service Checking. (It was my managing of that project that led to my being named Chairman of the New Products Committee by Bob Harra. Jim Wadsworth was also a member of that committee.) Jim and I had an acquaintance over the years. We sometimes went to lunch together and discussed ethics in business.
There is irony in this new reorganization, which will be seen later. Still, even though some thing changed. (We couldn’t get things we wanted so easily anymore), I still liked my job and working with Jim and Deborah. My Strong Points system was well designed, easy to use and though I only had six months left of the eighteen months, I was hoping Dave could pull strings and keep me safe in his lair.
Then on another dull and drear January day, one year after I had left Deposit Services, Jim Parmiter showed up at the lair door and snatched me away to Management Accounting. Stolen away six months early.
The new hot button at Wilmington Trust was cost and profitability. I had been pushing for knowing costs for fifteen years, had built an Activity Based Cost System on my own initiation that had been a success. But as they say, no good turn goes unpunished.
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