Money saving, smart spending, and other intelligent management of money WTF.
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Ok in my company we have years and years worth of paper records. Obviously paper is bad. It can be destroyed, not backed up, has to be manually indexed (the manager literally keeps a pad with memorable text incase something ever needs to be accessed). Not to mention we have offices with nothing but paper stacks because we don't have enough room to store it all. Basically we need it in a computer. More importantly filed, tagged, searchable, backed up.
Solution Number 1:
Some software was bought to scan, file, and manage the paper. A person would scan, it would get into the system, a temp would type in information for indexing, and vuala problem solved.
The only problem: The scanner was such shit that the paper scanned was unreadable. Naturally instead of scanning in 100 pages, testing, ensuring all is PERFECT, then paying high ammounts for software licenses, temps, etc before doing all the heavy lifting... did not happen. All 15000 pages were scanned and filed (mind you the person had to scan a page, then take the physical copy and fill in manually certain fields) and then the manager looked, and realized the pages were UNREADABLE. The entire project was
scrappedput on the shelf. Now I don't mean: "software licenses were canceled, refunds were demanded, scanners were returned", I mean they just didnt use it. Paying about 100,000/year for scanning capabilities using a high-speed low resolution scanner and shit software.Solution Number 2:
A few years went by and my team was contracted to assist with this. We already deal with a vendor that has scanners that can scan 2 pages per second in super-high resolution, perform OCR (we can give cover pages which are used to link scans to records in our database), so naturally they go and order a $20,000 scanner. The license allows them to scan 10,000 pages per month. Costs quite a bit per month. So naturally they got the scanner, therefore we must write the software.
I wrote the filing software. Basically 70% of the manually typed in data was already in our database and thus a single piece of information had to be read from the paper, and typed in, after that all is auto-completed. The paper was no longer necessary, once scanned the user can view the original and the form side-by-side on their screen. Everything is backed up, etc.
The software was developed, tested, deployed. They got rid of the old system and were so happy with the new one they could not wait to try it out. The manager spoke about how he could finally get rid of the paper, be able to do things with this system they could never do on paper, save time, space, etc. Everyone was happy. And the scanner costs only $5000 a month!!!
So the current state? 15 pages scanned. 12 months of $5000 wasted. Oh and there is a total of 20,000 pages accumulated over 10 or 20 years or so. So I don't know what genious thought of needing 10,000 pages/month scanning capabilities.
This is all going on while the company is trying to squeeze out every penny they can to save since they expect to do rather poorly this year.
On a side note, we have another office that uses this sort of scanner. Same sort of set up. Except all the people in the office for 2 years have been using a $50 scanner which scans 1 page per minute and ignoring the $20,000 scanner sitting next to them which scans 2 pages per second in higher resolution. Paying for 10,000 page/month scanning capability for 2 years.
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These people, as you describe it, are very, very, very stupid.
I'm also quite cranky, and maybe I should go home an play a game where I kill many, many NPCs.
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@dhromed said:
I'm also quite cranky, and maybe I should go home an play a game where I kill many, many NPCs.
Might I suggest "Serious Sam - The Second Encounter". Very fun game with absolute loads of NPCs. It's a couple years older, so it should run on most any PC, and would probably be available cheaply.
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In management-speak, more-expensive == better, unless less-expensive==better; depends on the time of the day.
Also, purchases come out of a different budget line than productivity.
Standard management stuff...
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and vuala!!!! "et voilà" please.
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@dhromed said:
I'm also quite cranky, and maybe I should go home an play a game where I kill many, many ZOMBIES.
@dhromed said:
I'm also quite cranky, and maybe I should go home an play a game where I kill many, many SPAMMERS.
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@EJ_ said:
Might I suggest "Serious Sam - The Second Encounter". Very fun game with absolute loads of NPCs.
Good tip.
I already beat the crap out of Painkiller (lovely game, you know!), and am looking for something fresh i.e. more the of the same in a different coating.
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@astonerbum said:
Solution Number 1:
Some software was bought to scan, file, and manage the paper. A person would scan, it would get into the system, a temp would type in information for indexing, and vuala problem solved.
"vuala"? I almost thought you said... nevermind, it's a dirty word.
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@DWalker59 said:
@astonerbum said:
Solution Number 1:
Some software was bought to scan, file, and manage the paper. A person would scan, it would get into the system, a temp would type in information for indexing, and vuala problem solved.
"vuala"? I almost thought you said... nevermind, it's a dirty word.
I just think it's odd that someone's
vulvacunt problem got solved with IT.
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@snoofle said:
In management-speak, more-expensive == better, unless less-expensive==better;
But either way, it *will* be expensive.
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@dhromed said:
I just think it's odd that someone's
vulvacunt problem got solved with IT.Are you familiar with AdultFriendFinder?
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You guys do realize that this thread was from a month ago, and that it was resurrected by a spambot, right?
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@Quietust said:
You guys do realize that this thread was from a month ago, and that it was resurrected by a spambot, right?
DWalker is a spambot?
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Quietust said:
Absolutely not, but I believe this one was one of the ones rezzed by that spambot that rezzed 70 some threads one day last month. Not that that has anything to do with the current age or rezziness of this thread.You guys do realize that this thread was from a month ago, and that it was resurrected by a spambot, right?
DWalker is a spambot?
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@belgariontheking said:
No, it was some post from Wednesday with a link in it in white text so you couldn't see it.@morbiuswilters said:
@Quietust said:
Absolutely not, but I believe this one was one of the ones rezzed by that spambot that rezzed 70 some threads one day last month. Not that that has anything to do with the current age or rezziness of this thread.You guys do realize that this thread was from a month ago, and that it was resurrected by a spambot, right?
DWalker is a spambot?
