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Douglas,

Your view is somewhat narrow. It seems to come from doing the same thing over and over. This is typical of a DP Manager, not so typical of a CIO.

True, however since I am in the unique position of having the final say on
this issue as it pertains to my company, it is what it is and despite what
the general market may think or say I will always take the approach of what
is best and most efficient for this company.

Your position on having the final say is simply a bottleneck. Shouldn't your BUSINESS have the final say on what is good for the business?

Without question, there are so many business process improvements you could make that would remove green screen entirely, save your company money, etc etc.

You give an example:
As one finite example, dispatchers do not involve themselves with driver pay
issues, home time issues, advances, personal matters, etc.  They are
responsible to ensure that the trucks in their particular market are 1.
picking up on time and delivering on time.  That is their sole
responsibility.  Nothing more and certainly nothing less.  The fleet
coordinator is responsible for handling the driver needs and they do not
involve themselves in dispatch matters, except to the extent of working with the driver to keep them happy. This model allows us to focus our attention
on the responsibilities as they have been assigned and we are far more
efficient with it. It is unique, and I am aware of only two other carriers
that use this approach.

With that example in mind, a dispatcher does not need to concern themselves
with advances, payroll information, etc.  So why display that information
for them?  What they see (5250) is a listing of the truck no, trailer no,
deliv date, time, cust no and from that subfile they can select the specific
information if needed.

What if their were RFID tags that could be used to capture what is on a dispatch. This one simple technological breakthrough would remove most of the human interaction, and ALL of the data entry - with the exception of some confirmation process - hmmm, a mouse click maybe?

I have examples of companies with a small investment in RFID for dispatching, and their efficiency has improved, their accuracy rates are up, and no one is standing around a green screen any more. It seems to me that you are looking at the simple comparison of green vs. GUI and not looking at new technologies that could improve the business processes.


I would also say that from a training perspective, learning a menu driven
system is far easier than links, butttons, drop down lists, etc. although I
am quite sure others will disagree with that statement.

This is a completely narrow and outdated perspective. It applies ONLY to people familiar with green screens. EVERYone else already knows how to use a GUI. And, when a GUI uses things that are intuitive - like pictures/icons/tool tip text and so on - the learning curve is reduced significantly. Now you can focus on teaching them their JOB, not what the codes mean.

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