Have you ever played Chinese Whispers? A group of people pass a message from one to another. Somebody then says out loud the final interpretation of the original message. What started as “Tell Sarah the Fancy Dress Party is Friday but don’t wear anything scary because the theme is musical and pantomime characters” ends up as “Andrea is starring in a scary pantomime as a bus driver on Wednesday”.
On my seventh birthday my Dad bought me an Atari 400 computer with 16K of memory. This was a few years before the popular Sinclair ZX81 or the Commodore C64. Looking back it was probably one of the best things he did. To me it is second nature to pick up a computer or piece of technology and use it effectively. I‘ve used computers for years so understanding their capability and how they can solve problems is easy.
When we introduced online booking, we introduced a system where electronic data was received in a standard format. This helped enormously because we never had to transpose information again or re-invent the wheel by copying data that the customer had already created. Instead the information could flow freely from a web form to a database and all we had to do was add a price and a driver to complete the booking.
Databases are amazing. The advantages they bring are incredible. The power to search for records in an instant is mind blowing and their ability to organise information is outstanding. If you wanted to organise a conference for fifty people all travelling separately, how much faith would you really have in a one-man-band and his hand-written, scribbled diary? Especially when compared to a professional team who access central information created by the customer?
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