It takes hard work to complete ten successful years in this industry. We have put a lot into developing the solutions and services that help power your businesses, we know that there’s one reason we’re doing as well as we are.

You.

This newsletter, the first for PICS, features just a few of your successes. We are recognizing the people who have worked with our consultants, our programmers, and Terry and me to build better businesses. Although many of our customers are different – and have different goals and business models – they have one thing in common: they are willing to embrace technology to improve their businesses.

In this issue read how Bill Soule, IT Director at Schefenacker Vision Systems, has worked with PICS consultants to increase delivery ratings by an amazing 30 percent. Hear about Scott Sangster’s story, a financial analyst at Medtronic ERS, who partnered with Cindy Allred and other PICS consultants to correctly post revenue of $500,000 that was previously missed.

I would like to thank Barry Dinetz, president of KIT Industries, who told us how his new Web site makes ordering easier for customers, and to Nick D’Angelo, who uses SysTrak to keep his system running smoothly and efficiently. They are all doing really amazing things.We want you to benefit from their knowledge and experience to add more to your bottom line. Again, I would like to thank you for your partnership, and we look forward to another great decade.

As we finish our tenth year of providing technology services to our customers, it reminds me of what it was like then and just how radically everything has changed.
Those of you who know me know that I have been involved with the Internet for almost 15 years. That dates back to when we “gophered” information instead of “Googling” it. Back then, we had just started to hear about Tim Berners-Lee and his beta software for something he called the “World Wide Web”.
PICS Online then was the PICS Online BBS (Bulletin Board System), and we had one computer, one telephone line, and one modem for each concurrent user. People used to get busy signals waiting for a open line. When was the last time you got a busy signal? Long distance at that time was about 30 cents a minute and the modems were lightning fast at 19200 baud. File downloads took hours.

How different is it today? Well, for starters, we install software from the Internet just as easily as we used to from Novell Netware drives. Remember Novell when it was the only LAN game in town – where are they now? And speaking of disk drives, storage space that used to take up an entire rack in a server room is now on your keychain for under a hundred bucks.

Enterprise software installations are also a lot different today than they were ten years ago. Recently I have shown MFG/PRO customers that a $5,000 Dell “PC” running RedHat Linux can run circles around a large $200,000 “multi-user” mini computer with some big bucks O/S. We have replaced entire rooms full of computer equipment with a single rack-mounted server and disk array.

A few things remain the same, though. Your desire to run a successful business hasn’t lessened – and neither has our drive to help. Rich and I along with the entire PICS team are still as excited as we were 10 years ago to show you how to get the most out of your technology dollars – even if you are still running Novell. As we move into our next decade of providing technology products and services one thing is certain: change is inevitable and we are prepared to help you navigate the waters.