[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]Every once in a while a great ques­tion is asked, and the imme­di­ate reac­tion of people listen­ing to the con­ver­sa­tion will say:“That’s it! You have hit the nail on the head!” Strange thing is that the answer to the ques­tion is not forth­com­ing, it only opens the door to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the prob­lem. It steers the con­ver­sa­tion towards uncharted ter­rit­ory, with excit­ing and unex­pec­ted end results. In a great book by Peter F. Hamilton, the Silfen, an elf-​like race, choose to wander across uncharted alien worlds on Paths. New paths open upon reach­ing a des­tin­a­tion, trans­form­ing their jour­ney

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]People think that you are doing noth­ing if they don’t know what you are doing! A good friend of mine, not the talk­at­ive type, mind you, came up with this say­ing one even­ing I was com­plain­ing that very few people appre­ci­ated what I did. This encour­aged me to start this blog, to share what I was doing, and to talk about my likes and dis­likes. Although my job takes most of my time, I find it excit­ing to read — all types of mater­i­als — and be sur­prised by the nev­er end­ing ingenu­ity and some­times stu­pid­ity of man­kind. On this trail, I came across an inter­est­ing book by Richard Koch

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][text_output]In an ideal busi­ness world, doc­u­ments travel across the depart­ments with ease and mono­tony. We say that they flow. Unfortunately, things are nev­er this sim­ple. External factors, which are sel­dom under our con­trol, con­tinu­ously influ­ence our busi­ness. Our doc­u­ments have to per­form feats to reach their final des­tin­a­tion, and some­times they nev­er do. EXTREMELY SIMPLE SCENARIO Consider a very small dis­tri­bu­tion busi­ness. The owner’s only con­cern is to be able to receive goods from his sup­pli­ers and to sell these goods to his cus­tom­ers. In terms of the pro­grammes he needs to run his busi­ness we find that, in addi­tion to

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][button size="large" type="inverse" href="https://lesteward.com/generic-transactions-part-i/" title="Continued from..."]Continued from...[/button][vc_empty_space][text_output] Unfortunately, this was only the begin­ning. As com­pet­i­tion is get­ting fiercer, man­age­ment requires now the addi­tion of secur­ity fea­tures to the dif­fer­ent mod­ules. No cost price should appear in the ware­houses, and the goods receipts pro­ced­ure should be split in two steps: 13– The store­keep­er checks that the items and quant­it­ies are those that have been ordered, with no cost prices appear­ing on their ter­min­al screen. 14– The pur­chas­ing depart­ment then checks that the prices are in accord­ance with the pur­chase con­firm­a­tion they have received from the sup­pli­er. As the pur­chase con­firm­a­tion is still a manu­al

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]When Dalo, the pro­ject man­ager, received the call that morn­ing, she did not expect that it would last for so long. Frida, the IT man­ager at the hos­pit­al, was frantic: someone has been chan­ging the prices of pros­theses in some of the invoices sent to the insur­ance com­pany. How was this pos­sible? The billing applic­a­tion used an advanced access con­trol and secur­ity sys­tem. Before end­ing the call, Dalo prom­ised to invest­ig­ate the mat­ter and revert dur­ing the day. She put the phone down and worked her way through the work­flow. She was look­ing now at the screen that allowed the billing man­ager,

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]I am a busy exec­ut­ive. The bank has put me in charge of its admin­is­trat­ive affairs. When I took the job, I ima­gined my day as a sequence of well-ordered steps, cul­min­at­ing in mat­ter of fact decisions with clock­work pre­ci­sion. It is 8:30 in the morn­ing. Monday. The week­end is behind us. Lunch was nice in the little res­taur­ant in the hills. The phone rings. Joe, the down­town branch man­ager is inter­rupt­ing my email sort­ing ses­sion. “I have a prob­lem with the air con­di­tion­ing equip­ment, the day is going to be hot!” I won­der why Joe has called me dir­ectly, the head of main­ten­ance is the

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]Why are the Virgin Atlantic stew­ard­esses wear­ing red high heeled shoes? Is it to bet­ter serve the fre­quent fly­ers of the now legendary air­line? It seems that even the legendary air­line has lost its com­pass. The page ref­er­en­cing the high heeled shoes has gone miss­ing! I have checked the Virgin web­site, I could not find it. I will stick to one of my favour­ite songs instead, and hope that the ‘spark’ will not ignite. Why is “Better serving our cus­tom­ers” a use­less mot­to? Why is it almost impossible to please “some people most of the time”? Why is it bet­ter to say “NO” than to

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]I woke up this morn­ing while in the middle of a dream. It hap­pens rarely. The good thing about wak­ing up this way is that you remem­ber the last part of the dream. Dreams, they say, reflect the sub­con­scious thoughts of the pre­vi­ous day(s). I tend to dis­agree. Who would know what are your sub­con­scious thoughts? They are “sub” and “con­scious”. What is under­neath “con­scious”? Are we dig­ging here? Anyway, as I was say­ing, I was dream­ing about driv­ing an old red Volvo, and I could not change gears. It was frus­trat­ing. I could feel the frus­tra­tion and could do noth­ing about it. The funny thing is

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]In the clas­si­fied sec­tion of a daily news­pa­per an advert­ise­ment reads: “Old prob­lem look­ing for a way out”. If I find a solu­tion to that old prob­lem, do I become part of the “cre­at­ive” group of humans? If I spend time and energy, elab­or­at­ing this new solu­tion and then stop, will I have reached my goal? I would think not. The answer I have worked so hard to elab­or­ate needs also to be eleg­ant, uncom­mon, unique and should enjoy sim­ple qual­it­ies to con­vert and be adop­ted. I could have also come across a bril­liant idea acci­dent­ally and the eureka moment will then be at hand. When we look back

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]A few years ago, as we were devel­op­ing a soft­ware applic­a­tion for a major whole­sale and retail dis­trib­ut­or, I made a new friend, a guy named Gordon Saris. That’s him above. (Don’t look, he is pro­tec­ted by copy­rights; that’s why I had to remove his pic­ture from here.) And if you are won­der­ing if I mis­spelled his name, think again; I can assure you that this is what he is called. We should not be fooled by movie dir­ect­ors! Gordon acts like someone from fic­tion, but he sure feels real to me. His skills and exper­i­ence. The goals he has set for his insti­tu­tion. What parts of run­ning a bank he