Greg Patterson, Senior Sales Engineer in Pre-Sales at Fresche, shares his favorite green screen story:
Recently, Greg was onsite at a customer specifically for a data entry issue they were experiencing with their green screen applications. Specifically, they wanted to add additional functionalities, but didn’t have the source code, so they needed to add some additional fields to capture the information. 13-14 of their employees were using this particular green screen on a regular basis, so there was also a productivity issue. Their manager had been working and using this database for over 15 years… Since she had such a deep knowledge with their application and was very familiar with this particular green screen, she was able to fix this recurring issue very quickly. But nonetheless, having to fix it all time meant she was still spending time fixing it.
This is where Greg was happy to step in: Greg recorded what she was doing so he could watch the video and analyse how she was resolving the issue. He was able to find a permanent automated solution that included changing their system with Presto. The client was very pleased with how fast and easy it was to implement Presto. They have been using it now for 5 years, saved training costs, and love that they no longer need to use function keys.
Of course, a modern interface appeals to a broader audience than the typical green screen. There are still a considerable amount of businesses that use green screens during real-time customer interactions. Companies need to think about how the usability, look and feel are impacting both the employees and customers.
Trevor Perry: Manual data entry, by nature, is full of human error and can introduce inaccuracies in the systems. I travel often and can appreciate, for example, hotels with systems where I only need to provide my partial address for the rest of the information to be searched and auto-populated.
Greg Patterson: Adding intelligence and automation to be able to pre-fill forms and fields can be of huge value for companies in order to save time and ramp up operations speed and productivity. Improving the look of the screens, workflow and performance of the process is a key area of focus as I’m working with clients in my current role at Fresche.
Trevor Perry: My favourite story in terms of data entry is a client that had to go through 12 screens in order to access the order entry list of items! Typing through these 12 screens took them anywhere between 2 to 3 or 4 minutes, which translates into a lot of wasted time. They asked me what could be done to improve productivity and reduce the number of steps necessary. The solution was a new form that only required 2 pieces of information in order to gather the rest. In the end, their new process took only 7 seconds. They were very pleased with the results, until they later hired a new IT manager… who thought these 7 seconds were too slow! It’s all about perspective, and continuous improvement is key.
Greg Patterson: Absolutely, I had similar experiences. Outside of data entry, shortcut menus are simply essential! Things that we may take for granted or think cannot easily be changed… think again!
