Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.
1 Peter 2:13-14
When the company was divided up into “vertical” market units, the one place I didn’t want to end up was in Local Government. To me, it had the impression of being old-fashioned and cash strapped. I contrasted my imagination of victorian old and dusty town and county halls with clean, modern glass sky-scrapers that I associated with the private sector and financial services in particular.
The reality was that Local Government was one of ICL’s biggest markets. Every town and county council had a mainframe, which tied it in to the company providing that mainframe. Councils in the UK were divided roughly 50-50 between ICL and it’s arch rival and nemesis, IBM. Customers who had invested in ICL mainframes would, by and large, get all of their IT needs from ICL. This would include terminals, personal and office computers, networking etc etc. ICL had developed (or obtained) a range of local government application software packages, so that customers would have ready-made systems to, for example, collect rates, manage finances, and administer street repairs etc. The success ICL had in that era has led me to conclude that the IT company that will be most successful in a given market, is the one that owns the applications.
When in 1990, the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher introduced the dreaded Poll Tax, or Community Charge as it was officially known, ICL was able to sell new software and mainframes to all of its customers who needed to collect this new tax. To the Thatcher Government, it was a total disaster, but to companies like ICL it was a money spinner, but only because ICL was on the ball and had developed the new software.
Being a networks consultant, my role was to help ICL customers design and build computer networks across their city, town or council. A typical local council will have dozens of offices and depots dotted around their area and in the case of those responsible for eduction, schools and colleges as well. This meant that there was a requirement for a large network across a very small geographic area. This was different from what would be required by a national bank or retail network in that their networks would be country wide.
Councils were, after a decade of cuts by the Conservative Government, strapped for cash which was another factor which made the job of networking in local government, different.
I had a very satisfying job, building relationships with IT and Network managers in councils across the north of England. I was able to help them save money and build state of the art new networks to adapt to the new era of office computing, while making money for ICL at the same time.
We also had a really good team going and there were networks people like me, together with other specialists and even local government business experts, collaborating together to help the company grow its influence in the market.
There were a couple of consultants on the team who were delivering a service to customers called “Decision Conferencing” which was a method to help teams come to a joint decision on a complex issue. The method used some software which ran on a laptop computer that the consultants would set up in a conference room. This was the first time I saw a laptop computer which was then, a completely new technology. I think the laptop was a Toshiba because ICL hadn’t reached the stage of making its own laptop. The laptop was connected to a device that sat on top of an overhead projector. The overhead projector was of the type that projected whatever was printed or written on an A4 sized acetate sheet which would sit on top of a very bright lamp. You could buy write-on or printable sheets or could get presentations professionally produced (at a cost of around £15 per sheet). However this special bit of laptop technology had a transparent display that you would put on top of the projector so that what was projected, was whatever was on the laptop display.
For quite a few years, this kit was something we would travel around with, so that we could show computer presentations and demonstrations through a projector. A short while after, projectors that could connect to a laptop directly became available and that is the type that is still in use today.
At this time, we were developing the idea of selling consultancy to our customers for a price, a day rate, rather than them simply considering it as something they got for free because they were buying expensive computer equipment. We went on a training course called “Commercial Consultancy”, where we got trained in the practices employed by the big consulting firms to maximise the consultancy revenue you could get from a customer.
ICL always struggled to get customers to pay for people. I think the problem is that the company was historically focused on selling hardware and software, consultancy was something you chucked in for free as a sweetener. As Local Government Consultancy Services we were able to start to develop consulting as a business by understanding the customer.
Meanwhile, the part of ICL tasked with developing the company’s potential in networks didn’t really like the fact that network consultants were working in the customer focused part of the business. Their view of the world was that all the network specialists should all work for them. This was a running battle between the respective managers for some time and I don’t think the managers in what was then called Network Services could quite understand why anyone wouldn’t want to be part of their empire.
Eventually the Network Services management won the day and there was a company wide decision that all networks oriented people would work for this division. This was deeply unpopular with many consultants, like me, who had seen the benefits in working in customer (rather than technology) focused teams.
Richard Mann 