Why Am I Doing This?

I've spent most of the last 20 years working in the fruit industry specialising in systems design and implementation, finance, IT, supermarket EDI/ASN, warehouse & pack house management, site openings & closures, QC systems, logistics, stock control, voice picking systems, financial and operational control/reporting and implementation of BI solutions. 

Way back in 1985 I obtained an honours degree in Accountancy & Financial Management and subsequently trained to be a Chartered Accountant initially at a medium sized London based practice and subsequently at two large international practices working on a wide range of audit clients from sole traders to listed companies as well as undertaking accounts preparation work for entertainment celebrities.  Having qualified, I found my way into the early beginnings of what was then a very embryonic IT world in the accountancy practices.  These were the heady days of DOS, no MS windows or mouse, green or orange monochrome screens and the twin floppy drives (one for the program, one for the data).  The "portable" computer was about the size of a sewing machine and weighed pretty much the same.  Prior to leaving practice for industry, I spent some time working in insolvency and corporate reconstruction which taught me a lot about the realities of running businesses and the human cost of business failures.  After leaving practice, I held a Finance Director position with a plc in the security industry for 5 years and ended up getting involved in central station alarm handling systems and the associated engineering scheduling/maintenance subsystems and the financial systems relating to the billing of service calls and maintenance contracts.  I remember driving up to PC World in Croydon in my first week to buy a Dell PC, an HP Laserjet and copies of Lotus 123, Lotus Freelance and Wordperfect (all DOS versions).   I even sneaked in a copy of After Dark.  Our world was turned upside down in 1996 when Docklands was bombed and one of our central monitoring stations had to be evacuated.  The internet pretty much didn't exist and we used to speak to people face to face or on the phone rather than spend hours as slaves to e-mail/phone texts and whatsapp.  Mobile phones were the size of bricks and just told the time and rang when someone called you.  Modems were just becoming available and made strange noises when you attempted a connection.

My two spells in the fruit industry were briefly interrupted by a year or so working for a cheese  company supplying a large number of deli's, wholesalers and a major supermarket.  I have to say that I look back on that time with a great degree of fondness & nostalgia.  It certainly opened my eyes to the world of cheese - "cracking cheese Grommit".

Despite being an Accountant by training, I've always ended up working mainly in operations and IT rather than finance.  I've witnessed the original standard infrastructure of dumb terminals (WYSE - remember them!) connected to a mainframe dumped in favour of networked PC's and Laptops connected to a file server which, in turn, have now been dumped in favour of thin clients running terminal services to central servers and the rise of Citrix - its all gone full circle!  Physical servers have now been replaced with virtual servers and gone are the days of unscrewing the server casing to add memory chips, network cards or disks (These skills will be lost over time).  Remote working is the new buzzword and I wish I'd bought shares in Zoom!  Everything is now in the "cloud" and being cynical, is either being monitored as part of some huge data analysis of each of our lifestyles or being hacked.  My elderly neighbour is totally "off grid" and even leaves her phone unplugged until she needs to use it to make a call - in some ways she is better off and enjoys life without the interference and stress of modern technology.