Outside of work, the three main interests in my life were golf, watching soccer, and traveling. To partly satisfy the latter, soon after I qualified, I moved from my parents’ home near Glasgow, Scotland to London, England, where I found somewhere to live and a job in a Chartered Accountant’s office.
One of my first jobs for my new employer was to Audit the computerized stock control system of a large company which was listed on the London Stock Exchange. It wasn’t the stock of their finished product, but the stock of all the materials and other items that a company of that size needed to have constantly on hand to run smoothly. I can still remember the sly smile on my boss’s face as he wished me luck the Friday before I left to travel to the Midlands of England to start my new assignment.
On the Northbound train the following Monday morning I read the Company’s last set of accounts. I saw that “Sundry Stocks and Stores”, as they were called, had been valued the previous year at 15.7 Million Pounds. “Shit, I thought to myself, that’s a bit different to the value of the stocks of the corner shops I used to produce accounts for in Glasgow”.
After I arrived, I was met, booked into a hotel, taken to the client’s offices, and introduced to the head storekeeper. I was shown around a huge warehouse the size of a main street department store in a large city. To say I was overawed would be an understatement.
“Now let me show you our new computer”, the head storekeeper said. “We are very proud of it. We only got it this year and this is the first time our records have been computerized. We only had manual records up to the end of the last financial year. What a job that was.” After we had completed our quick tour of the store itself, we entered an adjoining room and into a different world. One I had never experienced before. I had dealt with the output from large computers in the past but had never seen them in action like this.
The room was about 25 meters square and around all the walls there were huge machines each with madly spinning spools of tape. In the center of the room were several rows of desks, where girls were reading information from pieces of paper and punching holes into cards. Other employees were taking these punched cards and slotting them into a machine in the middle of the huge computers with the spinning wheels. Although everything was silent, the buzz of activity was unmistakable.
After being shown around and having everything explained to me, I was led into an adjoining smaller office containing only a desk, a filing cabinet, and a few chairs. There was a table with coffee and tea-making facilities in the corner. “This will be your room for the duration of the audit,” the storekeeper announced. He then pulled a plastic-covered file of 15-inch wide computer printout paper from the cabinet. “These are last month’s computerized results,” he said. “Nobody reads them, because nobody understands them, but they must be right because they are produced by the computer,” he said naively as he plonked the plastic-covered sheets of paper on the desk. “My extension number is 119 if you need me,” he announced as he left the room.
I wearily made myself a cup of coffee, before sitting down to glance through the printouts. “They must be right because they are produced by the computer”, I thought. That doesn’t sound like a good omen to me.
As I was eager to see the total value, I instantly looked at the last page. I must have stared at those few figures for five minutes, mouth agape in disbelief. I finally gulped down the remains of my coffee before it got too cold before I dialed 119.
“Head store man”, was the reply.
“It’s Phil, the auditor here. Could you please round up yourself, the head of the computer department, and the 2 senior men who receive and distribute goods as quickly as possible? Come to my room. We have a huge problem on our hands,” I ordered, as determinedly as I had ever ordered anybody before and probably since.
“But,” the storekeeper started to reply.
“No arguments, just do it quickly”, I interrupted, before slamming down the phone.
I must have frightened the poor storeman significantly, as 20 minutes later he and three other gentlemen were sitting round my table. After everybody had been introduced to me, I said, “first, I’d like all of you to guess the value of the stock the computer thinks you had on hand at the end of last month.” The guesses ranged from 13 to 18 Million Pounds. “Well,” I said, “I hope you are all sitting comfortably because the computer actually thinks that your stock value was a NEGATIVE 37 Million Pounds.” A gasp of horror went round the room.
“Don’t panic…yet. That’s my job,” I said with a pretend smile. “The financial year-end is two months away, so we’ve plenty of time to fix things”. I then asked the storekeeper how long it would take to do a full physical count of the total stock on hand now. After he told me “four days”, I instructed him to organize one from Thursday until Sunday that week. I also told him to broadcast the fact to everybody who needed to know, that there would be no receipts or issues of stock from Thursday until Monday next week. I also organized individual half-day meetings with the computer manager, the head receipts man, and the dispatch man for the afternoon, and the next morning and afternoon.
By Tuesday evening I knew the answer, and I spent Wednesday writing a report, which I distributed to the four people I had talked to, each member of the company’s Board of Directors, and had telexed it to the appropriate audit partner in London. (It was before the days of even fax, never mind the Internet).
I called the problem the “Toilet Roll conundrum”. Toilet rolls (for example) were ordered and delivered in cartons of 24 and the receiving clerk entered a “1” for each carton received on the receipts docket, a copy of which went to the computer department. The next day, when the cleaning lady went to stores to get a new toilet roll for the second-floor loo, the carton would be opened, one roll given to the cleaner and the distribution docket would also be marked “1”, so, according to the computer the stores should now have no toilet rolls when, in fact, it had 23. Then, to make matters worse, the next day the third-floor loo would run out of paper, and the computer would end up thinking that stores had 1 negative roll. This happened with everything that was bought in bulk and distributed in lesser amounts. Thank goodness the automatic re-ordering function of the software had never been turned on. The mind boggles at what would have happened then, if that had been the case.
On Thursday, while the physical stock count had started, the distribution manager noted the units in which every item of stock was recorded as being used, which he gave to the receiving manager, who then instructed his staff to receive stock using, what I called the ‘Issue Measure Code’. So, on the receipt of a carton of toilet rolls, “24” would be entered on the receipts docket rather than “1”. This system was put into action the following Monday. After the computer files had been cleared of all their numerical data, and the physical count numbers had been changed to Issue Measure Code numbers. In addition, each stock item had been re-valued, and the difference between that and the previous negative amount was entered as one huge adjustment for each stock item. The system worked flawlessly from then on.
Back at my employer’s London office I became known as “The Computer King” and a few years later when the office installed its first mini computer, which was the size of a desk and had no hard disk drive, Yours Truly was put in charge of it. That’s when the computerization part of my Computerized Accounting career really began.
But what can we, aspiring Affiliate Marketers learn from me successfully solving “The Toilet Roll Conundrum”? Simply, there are no problems, no matter how huge they appear to be when they first arise, that can’t be solved. If there were, you would nev
But what can we, aspiring Affiliate Marketers learn from me successfully solving “The Toilet Roll Conundrum”? Simply, there are no problems, no matter how huge they appear to be when they first arise, that can’t be solved. If there were, you would never have heard of Russell Brunson, Zac Johnson, or indeed our own Dean Holland. I encountered a problem, that immediately seemed to indicate that there was a discrepancy of about 52 Million Pounds, approximately 70 Million Dollars. Have you ever encountered a problem that big? Whether it be your auto-responder shutting down. or your website crashing?
I bet you haven’t
Okay, I admit that I have glossed over the hundreds of hours of work that the employees of the company I was auditing had to do to rectify the problem, but I was able to work out what they had to do, and issue instructions, in only three days.
So whatever problems you encounter along the way to Affiliate Marketing success, and there will be many, stick at it, seek help from your mentor if needed, do whatever extra work is required, and, NEVER GIVE UP.
Cheers
er have heard of Russell Brunson, Zac Johnson, or indeed our own Dean Holland. I encountered a problem, that immediately seemed to indicate that there was a discrepancy of about 52 Million Pounds, approximately 70 Million Dollars. Have you ever encountered a problem that big? Whether it be your auto-responder shutting down. or your website crashing?
I bet you haven’t
Okay, I admit that I have glossed over the hundreds of hours of work that the employees of the company I was auditing had to do to rectify the problem, but I was able to work out what they had to do, and issue instructions, in only three days.
So whatever problems you encounter along the way to Affiliate Marketing success, and there will be many, stick at it, seek help from your mentor if needed, do whatever extra work is required, and, NEVER GIVE UP.
Cheers
Phil