By Mindy Williams
Answer this riddle: What is everywhere, yet only in one
place, at the same time? What needs optimum health, yet can't
have its temperature taken?
Got the answer? It's your Clients & Profits database. And it's
your network that requires optimum health in order to manage the diverse
hardware, software, and documents necessary to run your agency.
A good system manager could probably answer those questions with little
effort. Hopefully you have a hero to answer the call when the system
needs help. You're courting disaster without one.
The Clients & Profits system manager is usually not a one-hat position.
Instead, it's an important responsibility added to someone's normal
duties. The Clients & Profits system manager might be the general
system manager, controller, AE, or an outside company that specializes
in system management.
"Our owner asked for a volunteer to take on the responsibilities of C&P system
manager&endash;and everyone but me took one step back," says Ray Williams, chief
financial officer at Robert Rytter & Assoc. "I'm also the IS manager, but
if I run into a situation where I need assistance, we have an outside service
that helps with any highly technical aspects of system management."
Angela Albanese, accounting supervisor for Bandy Carroll Hellige Advertising,
became the C&P system manager after a horrific chain of events. "When
the IT employee crashed our system, we discovered that the database hadn't
been getting backed up daily," Angela says. "We lost three month's worth
of data." Now Angela makes a daily backup, with a permanent weekly backup
on a CD.
While C&P system managers should know all the technical issues of
Clients & Profits, they can't be responsible for the quality of data
entered. But system managers should be aware of what needs to be entered
to ensure a good start, and what needs to be done to keep the database
running smoothly.
Continued on the next page
|
