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Automation Consultant

Interviews

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When beginning a project, consultant Greg Seo makes an appointment with the manager or owner of the company to find out what needs to be changed in the office.

"It's very important to understand how my client's business is operated," he says.

Seo checks out how the office is currently running, and talks to the workers to find out what tasks they think waste their time. "I have seen many business owners not utilizing the system they have in their offices," he says.

Sometimes all Seo has to do is show workers how to use their computers. Sometimes the work is much more complicated. For example, he might have to design and implement an entire computer system for an accounting firm. If the company needs a whole new computing system, Seo goes home to research what might work best.

"It's so important, because I have to find out everything about a product I am about to suggest," says Seo.

By taking extra time to do research, Seo makes sure he knows what he's talking about when he returns to the office.

"Because I'm an independent, I can't have the access to all the new technology and software," he says. "It makes me look very stupid when a customer asks me about a product that just came out on the market and I don't know about it."

After making sure he does know the system, Seo ventures back to see the company manager with his plans. He presents the material, discusses details and makes notes of extras that managers may want added. Back at his own office, Seo writes up the proposal.

All this work is done before a contract is signed. If the managers don't like Seo's design, they can just shake hands and ask him to leave the office.

"After the contract is signed the rest is pretty easy," he says. It can take anywhere from one week to six months to complete the plans that were laid out in the proposal.

Richard Cole, an automation consultant in Texas, doesn't have to worry about working without a contract. He works for an automation consulting company and spends all of his time writing computer software.

"I burn up my brain calories designing user programs for the Internet," he says.

He isn't involved with company directors who request the software changes. They tell Cole the problem they are having with a computer system and ask him to design software to fix it.

"I'll design a program that records information if you click on a particular website," he says. "Or I'll design customer surveys for websites. These programs are designed to synthesize the numbers you get from the survey."

Cole isn't involved in the actual restructuring or reorganizing of an office, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have the same impact on the people using his programs. He designs programs that often replace a worker.

"Yes," he admits, "my work gets rid of jobs. There's no question about that." However, Cole doesn't necessarily see job loss as a bad thing. His programs free people from doing tiresome, repetitive tasks, he explains. That frees them up to do other more meaningful and creative work.

"Computers are great for doing boring, menial tasks," he says. "People aren't."

Consultant Mark Fleeson finds eliminating jobs a difficult part of his work. He says companies frequently want to become automated so they can get rid of employees. Management often asks him to get rid of entire departments of people.

Fleeson has a problem with this. He tells management that people are needed to run the computers and that workers are needed for their ideas and creativity.

"It's difficult to overcome the mistrust of people who think that by automating a task, you are going to make them redundant," says Fleeson. Automation is supposed to help workers do their jobs better, not replace them, he says.

Vickie Phillips is an automation consultant for a library system in Houston. She says automation has not cost jobs. The opposite may actually be the case. "I need two, three more [consultants] with me," she says.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine today's libraries without automated scanners and a long row of computerized search terminals. And libraries must automate if they want to be accessible via the Internet, says Phillips.

"If your library is not automated, you can't even start to give [users] what they want on the web because you don't have your collection on machine-readable format," she says. "Once you get it automated, then you are in a position to put it on the web. And once you put [it] on the web, then the door is open for your community."