Management Insights

Description

Management Insights was founded in 1986 by a Fortune-500 Exec, Colin Kelly, who was tired of the rat race and ready to move back home and see if he could run a successful business of his own. It had been just 5-years since the first IBM-PC had rolled off the assembly line in Boca Raton Florida, and barely a year since the first major upgrade, the PC-AT had been introduced. Mr. Kelly, an early adapter of the new technology, firmly believed that personal computers were here to stay and that they would eventually find signifigant use in business applications. The only problem was that there were very few businesses in North Georgia large enough to have the Systems Department support staff that Kelly had relied on in his own adaption of computers for business applications. Those Systems departments which did exist wanted nothing to do with what they considered new tech-toys -- The fad of the 80s perhaps, but not for serious business. Certainly nothing that could threaten their room-size, megabuck mainframes. After all, the PC power user decision of the day was whether to spend an extra $350.00 on a 14-Inch 16-color monitor or to stick with the 13-Inch green or amber displays. On the bleeding edge of technology, experiments were going on as to how to utilize the memory in the region between the 640 Kilobytes recognized by the operating system (DOS version 3.0) and the 1 Megabyte supported by the new AT (80286) chip in the new computers. The most advanced hard drives could finally hold 40 megabytes. On the software front, Visicalc had been replaced by Lotus 123. Other office type applications were word processing, then dominated by WordStar, a warmed over program from the 70's and simple database management programs dominated by Ashton Tate's DBase and by a shareware program written by Jim Button called PCFile. Radio Shack still sold their TRS-80 including this Model 2 It would be another year before Microsoft released Windows 3.0. In fact, you were hard pressed to find any graphic content on any computer. Most of all, there was no internet! No EMail! It makes one wonder why anyone would want a computer in the first place! While larger businesses had embraced personal computers, at least in a limited way, smaller firms (25 employees or less) effectively utilized virtually no PC's -- but there were a lot more small businesses around. If they could be served, they would provide a much wider and more stable customer base. In the end it was decided that this new company would serve the small to midsize business market. Those firms without on-staff technicians to provide the necessary guidance and support were targeted. The original business plan described the following components of our service: Work with the client to identify the areas where computers could enhance their profitability or competetive advantage -Help the client to prioritize needs for long-term budget planning. -Determine the best equipment / software for the application respecting the client's budgetary and other constraints. -Find alternate sources for equipment and software. -Install the system and provide whatever training and support is necessary.

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