Let me tell you a story. This is a story of one boss and his assistant. This story took place in a time where some of us still used dial up to connect to the internet.
One fine Winter's morning, a bright eye bushy tailed assistant came into the office flustered. She got a call from the big boss that morning to come into work early. Of course she obliged, being her first job after university and all, she dropped everything and was at work half an our later.
"Quick, you have to figure out a way to fix our phones, computers, internet and etc. You are the IT graduate, do your stuff!" said the Boss.
"What happened?" asked the assistant.
"I am not sure but something fried our telephone system and because of that our internet is down," he replied.
"Owh shit!" was all the assistant could think of and said out loud. "So what do you want me to do?" she continued asking.
"I DON'T KNOW SOMETHING!" He yelled!
"Maybe it's time to think about bringing our telephone systems and the way we connect to the internet to the 21st century" she replied calmly.
" Yeay, yeah. JUST DO IT but don't make it too expensive" he exclaimed.
And so the assistant made a few hundred calls with a tiny mobile phone, was put on hold for a thousand years and a few days after that, they were back online and in business.
"What did you do?" asked the boss.
"I signed us up with Telco company, and got us broadband. That way we do not have to rely on a phone line to connect us to the internet. If our phone line is down, then at least we are still online and do our job effectively," the assistant explained. "Next, I signed us up with ECT, a virtual PBX (google it if you don't know what it means) system. That way, I can connect you or the others with one another either via the phone in your offices OR your mobile. How cool is that? You can save money!"
"How is this saving me money? All of these are costing me a BOMB!" he yelled impatiently.
"Trust me, I am the one with the degree in Information Technology remember? I read somewhere that if you bring all your technology into the 21st century, then it is less likely that you will have problems like these ever again. The technology that you use is so, how shall I put this nicely, ancient! Think of it as an investment to your firm," she said trying to convince him. "You do not want something like this to happen again right? Look at all the money that you are losing from not trading for nearly 2 weeks! I calculated it to be more than $30k!"
"Holy grapes! Alright, alright. Now let's get back to work!" the boss exclaimed. From that day forward, the boss learnt that technology is needed to run a business effectively.
*Disclaimer: The story's made up but the problems are real. This may or may not happened to someone you or I know. ;)
