"Phil Montgomery" wrote in
message ...
Bob,

I don't work for that particular enterprise any more. You must realize
though, that Guest Satisfaction and Marketing (getting the most money from
each guest) are primary at theme parks. IS drives the front gate sales
effort and POS systems. Backroom accounting and other reporting is an
after
thought. Place has been owned by SONY, Seagrams and a couple of other
biggie's, now owned by an even bigger entity -- main concern, contrib to
bottom line. These folks would flip if they read the article I saw
recently
about some casino in the southwest that uses a software package to track
Slot
Machine action versus physical location and allows them to relocate
machines
during the day to get better play from them. Anything these folks do
needs
to Increase revenue without any expenses. (EBIDTA or something like that).

I know that attitude Phil. Even in big organisations that understand the
value of centralised IT systems, like financil organisations, there are
always pockets that take the same attitude, usually to try and win some
brownie points at the cost of the roganisation.

Dad worked for IBM -- once told me a story about Arthur Watson (Tom's
brother) and a statement he once made -- "IBM is the most successful
mis-managed corporation in the world". It's boggling to think how
successful
some organizations might be if they actually did things the "right" way.

No, my old company was. Made billions profit every year, but we once did
some rough calculations, and if the waste that we saw was removed and it
rolled out in equal measures over the company, profits could be 2-3 times as
high.

Personally, I liked dBase III+ and dBase IV.

No accounting for taste <vbg