The IT department at work spent years developing a GPS tracking system for distribution personnel. Web-based, real-time, all the hot buzzwords, which allowed both our clients to watch their product get delivered and our managers the ability to track distributors and physically inspect deliveries as they’re happening.
However, they did this without really considering the realities of distribution and what it means to actively track somebody out in the field. So they never bothered to contemplate a scaled-down, PDA version of their system and rolled this out in full-PC web interface mode. (Trust me, I’ve tried using this via a PDA: it’s impossible).
So, to actually inspect a distribution, you need your laptop to be next to you in the passenger seat, with a cellular data card (ours is Sprint) attached and connected to the network, your browser open, and the ability to navigate the interface with the laptop mouse-pad.
While driving.
OK, so I get hired a month or so ago and I go on my first job this past week. I was given a laptop and data card for my trip, and I was off on my merry way.
I get to my destination, attach the data card to the laptop, fire it up, only to watch the installation files being copied to my computer. This gets done, setup.exe starts to run, and I’m asked for the Administrator name and password.
Which IT refuses to give me when I called them for it.
So I was given a laptop that was unable to perform the most basic of corporate (at least, this company’s) functions, this function being developed by the IT department itself.
Their response: “It’s your job to make sure your laptop works.”
My rebuttal: “Bullshit. IT needs to supply equipment that can perform the company’s basic tasks. Yes, it’s my job to make sure I have the correct files, even the correct programs to do my work, but a data card is standard equipment for every manager-level employee and above: I should no more worry about the data card working as I should the keyboard.”
Our website isn’t SEO’d (Search Engine Optimized, in other words, it isn’t easy for Google, et al to index our site - so the search engines don’t. You type in the most obvious keywords used to describe our company and 20 pages won’t get you to it).
Two weeks ago I wrote a memo suggesting code for optimization, so it wouldn’t take but 5-15 minutes to implement, but it’s still not SEO’d. I had the full code in there, so it was merely a matter of cut and pasting. I even told them where in the current code to place the new code.
I even attached in the HTML file, with revisions made, for their review. All they had to do was upload it.
Two weeks later it’s still not done.
This one confuses me because the President of the company is all hot and bothered about the lack of our website on Google, etc, when he does web searches. The IT department knows that the Pres wants this done… but it’s still not done.
Stupid.