Unless you’ve been living on a desert island for the past 5 years, you shouldn’t have failed to notice that when Apple released the first generation iPad back in 2010 it sparked off a revolution in personal computing terms when it brought to the consumer device market an intuitive, simplistic and easy to use personal computing device. Apple succeeded because they were one of the first companies to respond to a new demand in the marketplace, a demand fuelled by the world’s technological advances…and generated by impatience.

As I begin an 8-month project to setup, test and implement a new internal system for our helpdesk, I have started thinking about the bigger picture of what we do on support at SYSPRO’s European office, and what exactly determines the quality of service that we provide on a daily basis. It's all too easy to get 'bogged down' with day-to-day office life, without giving thought to how entire teams, departments and systems interlink to perform valuable functions. In terms of the Helpdesk team, we rely heavily on a number of systems that enable us to provide what is widely regarded as a highly competent and helpful application support function. So exactly what determines good customer service?

In my current and relatively new position, I've had to get to grips with a number of new systems – not only the 'ins and outs' of SYSPRO and K3 SYSPRO products, such as DataSwitch, but also with the internal systems required to manage my day-to-day workload. In this blog I'll share with you some of the tools, sources, and insights I have gained during my first six months within the SYSPRO community.

Last week I was at the supermarket in the very long queue at the “12 items or less” checkout station, when I glanced over at the adjacent self-checkout station. The store had installed it a few months ago but I (and most other shoppers) had never tried it – thinking it looked a bit confusing and not worth the hassle of learning how it worked, perhaps due to fear of not picking up quickly enough on how to use it. But the queue was so much shorter there, so I decided to try it. Although there was a learning curve to understand the process, for example to follow the on-screen instructions and to also get the knack of scanning barcodes properly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I’ll definitely use the self-checkout again.

A few weeks ago my ageing TV packed up and it was a sad moment when I threw my trusty appliance of many years onto the tip. I am now the proud owner of a flat screen, HD, Internet connected, "you name it my TV has got it" TV and wondering why I didn't upgrade it a long time ago.

I recently upgraded my cell phone (or mobile phone, for some people). I used to have a feature phone, but the opportunity arose for me to change to a new phone that runs the Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) operating system. Getting used to the physical phone, from one with real keys to one with a keyboard display, wasn’t the biggest adjustment – but getting used to the new way of doing things, actually doing everything, was an enormous challenge for me. In tech speak it’s called changing the UX (user experience). The last time I had such a challenge was moving from a DOS-based PC to one running the first version of Windows.

Recently I had several very ordinary (and seemingly unrelated) personal experiences that, in hindsight, had a common theme related to using an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business software system. Can you spot the theme?

The other week my family banished me to the attic with instructions to get rid of all the stuff I had put up there "that might be useful one day." I soon found myself sitting amidst piles of cardboard boxes reminiscing about school days and my early career in the computer industry. I even found my old beer mat collection from the '70s!

As memories came flooding back about my first job on a support desk it struck me just how much more sophisticated systems have become. I also found myself pondering how difficult it must be working on a support desk nowadays and also just how important a good support desk is to someone trying to implement and run a system.