Neil Bennett - Stores & Purchasing

I worked as a Stock Controller/Purchaser for a communications company. We built OB vehicles and Radio & TV stations around the world.

One main problem we had was cash flow in that large contracts would either be paid at the end or in installments, as the costs could be high, this caused problems in making our products.

At times we would have to get Government Bonds to help get us to the next stage. My manager was quite organized, but keeping track of around thirty independent purchasers meant that at any given moment, a new order might jeopardize a more immediate need for our financial resources.

One of my duties was to keep track of the purchase orders. My manager had a dozen or so Excel documents to keep track of things, but it did mean that records were a little disjointed. It was also easy to forget to update an individual file. Purchase orders were all on paper and did seem to disappear, which caused problems.

Although I had no experience in the area, I convinced my superior that we needed to start a database to handle this task and incorporate into it the many other aspects we had to manage.

Unfortunately, although the company granted me a personal copy of the database as a keepsake, I couldn't have the Purcahase Order Requsition Form which was my most prized accomplishment, (due to company property issues i.e. what you design on company time is theirs, not yours). I had designed it on the screen to look exactly like the paper copy it replaced. It could fill in a lot of the purchasers' information automatically and would supply them with the relevant details of the supplier. It could calculate costs, VAT & discounts. On printing or closing, it would automatically send a copy to me so that I could see if it could be a problem and notify accounts or the Financial Director accordingly.

The Financial Director even permitted me to have a dual-screen setup, as I explained I could have a "ticker" on the second screen that would continually show me the state of orders. I would know instantly wherever or whenever a purchaser would place an order. I was the first and only person to have this setup.

At the time of my departure, my colleague and I had created about fifteen or so apps covering everything from Asset Management to Deliveries. As one Manager said, "it is all things to all men" He didn't like me much.

That is sometimes the problem too, in that while I did impress a few people, I upset a few also. Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. I did get a lot of help. I had people write equations that I didn't know how to write. I got feedback more often than I wanted, but it all helped.

I did try to get IT to support me, but they didn't understand how it worked. As a newbie, I took shortcuts and used too many macros. On one occasion, I spent about a week going through the code and replacing all the macros with code, but IT still didn't understand it. I had permission from another database designer to reverse engineer some of his code for my needs. So my database had some of his code from the asset database and, although we had to update that continually we just incorporated the data into our database.

I guess the point I learned was that IT generally looks after systems, they're not programmers, and if you do this sort of thing, you're mostly going to be alone. I was working at times sixteen-hour days, and that is not easy!

This app my Boss designed. Although he was apprehensive at first, it is good. We had a volumetric calculator, but generally, if you wanted a quick carriage price estimate, this was the way to do it.

We were both ruthless and continually doing deals that brought our carriage costs down. We would get a tariff guide and incorporate that into the database for this to work. It pretty much meant that within an instant, anybody could find out what any given item would cost to send anywhere in the world.

As with all computer things, functionality is generally only limited by your imagination and knowledge. In the beginning, my manager did little to help, but when he saw it worked, he began to learn and write programs into it. Contributing, but in different ways to my approach. As a result, it was better than if I had just done it alone. Inspiring others is just as important as inspiring ourselves, I find.