There are several people in the main office that I ask now and again if there is anything I can do, as their IT Dev, to make their lives easier.

Now people seem to hate the idea of their lives being easier – they somehow equate my helping streamline their jobs as me making them less required, which for the most part is never true – there is always more work or more opportunities for the time that you can save.

So, if I ever asked one particular guy if there was any process he could think of for me to streamline something he’s involved with, he’s always said no – no real need.

Well, it turns out one of the guys in the remote office puts together, weekly, a report that he has to get the data from the system, add in costings, take from two other reports figures, format and send to the guy at the main office.

All in all, it probably takes him an hour of working on, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it took three hours of mucking around and corrections and other communication issues.

And all that could be replaced with a report directly from the main system that would take 10 seconds, and could be automatically emailed each week directly to the main office without any interaction or activity from the remote office.

It’s funny how you can perceive that an activity wouldn’t need streamlining when it only takes you a minute to read the email, but like an iceberg – under the surface, it’s taking someone else hours.

I guess the morale to the story is that I need to get round to the guys out there more and get their lay of the land, because what you see from your office isn’t the whole story.