Columns

Some of you may be under the impression that this job is a bed of roses. International travel to sunny climes at the customer's expense, gourmet business lunches, that sort of thing. Would that it were so.

I'm writing this as I sit, freezing, outside gate 12 in the departure lounge at Belfast airport at 7.30pm on a Monday evening. Even more bizarrely, I'm completely on my own. An hour ago a load of folks speaking in lilted brogues got on a plane for Aberdeen and, apart from two harassed souls dashing around madly looking for gate 17, I haven't seen anyone since the man in the World News stand drew down his shutters and went home an hour and a half ago.

Park life

Scraping the ice of my windscreen at 4am this morning, I'd set off to catch the 7am flight from East Midlands Airport to Belfast International. I'd already booked my parking on the airport website. Apparently the Premier Parking service is next to the passenger terminal, so that should have saved some precious time in the early hours. On the site you fill in all your details, including name and address, car make, model, colour and registration number, departure and return dates and flight numbers.

I arrived to find a queue of people snaking out of the parking office's door. Fifteen shivering minutes later I got to the desk, where the clerk asked for my name and address, car make, model, colour and registration number, etc, which he laboriously typed

ADVERTISEMENT

into his terminal. It seems there's no direct link between the website and the office system, so all the details have to be taken again if you book online (which everyone does, hence the queue). Computer systems - pah!

I then had to check in at the BMIBaby desk. I'd booked the flight online, and the confirmation said that if I had no luggage for the hold - which I didn't - I could check in electronically up to 24 hours before departure. When I tried, the site said, "It is not possible to check in online for this flight," so I had to do it the old-fashioned way. Another queue. At the boarding gate the announcer said that anyone who had checked in online could embark first. Nobody moved; I wonder why.

Out for the account

I was on my way to see a company accountant who wanted a demo of one of our specialist software packages. As usual, I'd asked some questions beforehand to make sure the trip would be worthwhile, including the issue of filthy lucre. He picked me up at 8.15am and by 9am we were deep in discussions about features, linking to accounts packages and importing data.

I knew before I set off that he'd already looked at another package. By 10am, things were looking up. The competing package couldn't handle a tricky VAT calculation that applies to some of the company's transactions, whereas our software copes magnificently without even bothering the user with the complications. Our software also seems able to solve any number of his problems. Could this be a result?

At 11am we were joined by one of the company owners, who wanted to discuss the software's asset-management features. This is a relatively minor aspect compared with the stock control, sales, marketing, CRM and profitability control features that most customers buy it for. However, the owner wants these features centred around the asset location. Our software uses the asset ID (serial or stock number) or the customer ID as the starting point for all those aspects. The competing product, it seems, uses the location. Damn.