Manatt's Mirror - December 2002

Project Managers study hard
in Brooklyn's new computer
training facility

What a winter! As I’m sure most people have heard, (or experienced!) we switched platforms on our accounting system over the winter. The amount of behind the scenes work it took to get this new system up and running was Herculean. Vickie, Pam, Jamie and Candace deserve a great big pat on the back for all the extra hours they spent on configuration, conversion, and implementation!

These projects come along once every decade or so…and I’m sure that if you were to bring it up again before the year 2010 you’d get an animated response from anybody involved!!! Seriously, though, the conversion went very smoothly for the short timetable we were presented with. As we continue to get the system tweaked and running as smoothly as possible, we’ll see great gains in getting as much out of it as we’ve put into it.

We also built a new training facility in some unused space above the technical center (see pictures above and to the right). Muchas gracias to Al Heintz for giving up the space, and especially to Mike V. and Al Manatt for their carpentry expertise. This space has already proven to be a very valuable asset for the Viewpoint (our new accounting system software) training and will continue to be utilized in technology training. If you come to Brooklyn, and have time, ask for a tour. It’s another fine example of people in the company coming together and building something to make ourselves stronger.

On the IT side, we’ve upgraded a number of other systems over the course of the past 4 months. The Brooklyn network has been upgraded to Windows 2000 Server, and we have also replaced the Web and Email servers. The number of unsolicited emails should continue to go down as time goes by. The first night the new email server was up and running we blocked about 60% of the normal amount of SPAM we receive. My goal is to hit 80% by the end of the month.

John Beader has been working all winter replacing computers and helping troubleshoot some of the performance issues we’ve found with our new SQL system. In addition to his assistance on the estimating system he’s taken on quite a load of help desk calls and other day to day issues our users have. Talk about diving in!

The plan for this summer is to keep on trucking along with some projects we put on the backburner last fall. Hopefully, we’ll get Tama Sand set up on an upgraded weigh-out/ticketing system. I’d really like to get Jamie and Candace involved in some data imports for our other 3rd party systems we use in the outside offices and plants. Hopefully, this will save everyone involved some time as far as data entry goes.

We’re also looking at getting a “point of sale” system for storefront type departments like Parts and the Tire Shop.