It’s time to return to the absorbing and intense issue of a decade ago: the state of technology at list rental companies. Things are moving backward at a rapid pace, and show almost no signs of progress.
To put it another way, we haven’t solved many of the problems that confronted our industry in the early ’90s, and there are few signs we’re even approaching solutions to the problems that face us in the first part of this century.
What were these problems? What are they now? Well, valuable technology performs only two major tasks for most businesses: solving processing questions and performing analysis. In the list rental industry, processing hang-ups involve order entry and invoicing systems. Analytical programs examine the nature of list use and the creation of a set of predictability standards.
In the early ’90s, many brokerage/management houses were without adequate list order and invoicing facilities. There was a sense that the old hardware and programming might not last much longer. Some of these systems had been purchased in the ’70s, before desktops were even envisioned
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