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 This
week finds us beginning to adapt to a new software tool we are
calling Sweetie, the arrival of which means we're also saying
good-bye to one of our part-time employees, Margit Gedra. But
while Margit's departure is a sad thing, the arrival of Sweetie
is the first step towards an exit we're all really looking forward
to: the retirement of SuperFRED!
Some readers may be surprised to learn that we want to get
rid of SuperFRED. After all, we've invested a lot of resources
in developing this custom software tool, and after years of development,
SuperFRED is finally working pretty well. But as I said a
few weeks ago when I unveiled an all-new
ruleset for Just
Desserts, sometimes the best thing you can do in a situation
like this is to just completely throw out what you've been struggling
to make work, and start again with something fresh.
So it is with SuperFRED. Commercial business-support software
tools have come a long way since we first looked at the options
and decided to build our own, and the options that now exist
are way beyond our increasingly-obsolete custom-built solution.
So, as soon as we can complete the transition, we'll be putting
SuperFRED out to pasture.
Obviously, this plan has long been in development... Kristin
has been looking at other software solutions for quite some time,
and since she found this particular option many months ago she
(and Meg and Robin and Craig and Marlene) have been poking at
it in great detail to make sure it will really do everything
we need it to do. We're all really excited about the solution
we've chosen... it's a software package called NetSuite, and
we've nicknamed our local incarnation Sweetie.
Meg was in town for three days last week, working hard with
Kristin and Margit to get ready to close out the 2005 books,
and rebuilding our chart of accounts into Sweetie, and now Josh
is in town plotting and scheming convention planning and working
with Kristin and Robin making plans for how we are going to move
our company into this new software. I keep hearing really exciting
comments from everyone who is learning about the many new features
Sweetie will provide. (There's also much satisfaction in certain
quarters over not having to do it the SuperFRED way any longer.)
Of course, many of Sweetie's benefits to us will be invisible
to you the customer. For example, we're really excited about
the sales and marketing tools Sweetie will offer our sales department.
Similarly, it will be a whole new world for accounting. And that's
where Margit comes in.
I've known Margit since college, and for the past several
years she's been helping us out, a few hours a week, with standard
book-keeping tasks and running the clunky interface that transfers
orders between SuperFRED and our old accounting program, MYOB.
She's a diligent worker and she's been fun to have around
and she's been a great help to us these past few years... but
unfortunately, the switch to Sweetie is automating her out of
this job. Everything will work differently with the new software,
changing or making unnecessary many of the tasks she's been doing
for us. The expertise she has built up with the MYOB software
is no longer useful, and with the new system, Meg will now be
able to manage our corporate finances more completely from her
home office in Kansas. This means there just isn't enough left
for Margit to do.
So, thank you Margit for all the help! We really appreciate
it, and we wish you all the best in future endeavors! I'm sure
we'll continue to be good friends...
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