Management Insights was founded in 1986 by a Fortune-500 Exec, Colin Kelly, who was tired of the rat race and ready to move back home and see if he could run a successful business of his own. It had been just 5-years since the first IBM-PC had rolled off the assembly line in Boca Raton Florida, and barely a year since the first major upgrade, the PC-AT had been introduced. Mr. Kelly, an early adapter of the new technology, firmly believed that  personal computers were here to stay and that they would eventually find signifigant use in business applications. The only problem was that there were very few businesses in North Georgia large enough to have the Systems Department support staff that Kelly had relied on in his own adaption of computers for business applications.

Those Systems departments which did exist wanted nothing to do with what they considered new tech-toys -- The fad of the 80s perhaps, but not for serious business. Certainly nothing that could threaten their room-size, megabuck mainframes. After all, the PC power user decision of the day was whether to spend an extra $350.00 on a 14-Inch 16-color monitor or to stick with the 13-Inch green or amber displays. On the bleeding edge of technology, experiments were going on as to how to utilize the memory in the region between the 640 Kilobytes recognized by the operating system (DOS version 3.0) and the 1 Megabyte supported by the new AT (80286) chip in the new computers. The most advanced hard drives could finally hold 40 megabytes. On the software front, Visicalc had been replaced by Lotus 123. Other office type applications were word processing, then dominated by WordStar, a warmed over program from the 70's and simple database management programs dominated by Ashton Tate's DBase and by a shareware program written by Jim Button called PCFile.

 
TRadio Shack still sold their TRS-80
including this Model 2
 It would be another year before Microsoft released Windows 3.0. In fact, you were hard pressed to find any graphic content on any computer. Most of all, there was no internet! No EMail! It makes one wonder why anyone would want a computer in the first place! While larger businesses had embraced personal computers, at least in a limited way, smaller firms (25 employees or less) effectively utilized virtually no PC's -- but there were a lot more small businesses around. If they could be served, they would provide a much wider and more stable customer base. 

In the end it was decided that this new company would serve the small to midsize business market. Those firms without on-staff technicians to provide the necessary guidance and support were targeted. The original business plan described the following components of our service:

 

Work with the client to identify the areas where computers could enhance their profitability or competetive advantage
Help the client to prioritize needs for long-term budget planning.
Determine the best equipment / software for the application respecting the client's budgetary and other constraints.
Find alternate sources for equipment and software.
Install the system and provide whatever training and support is necessary.
Provide continued service and support far superior to any competitor.
Keep-up-to-date on the trends of the industry so as to properly help the client with forward planning.

We must be computer experts so that our customers don't have to be.

This must have been a good list. It is still an accurate description of our core services. During the first year, while Management Insights was still a one-man operation, certain events made it necessary to reevaluate the relative priorities of some of the items listed above. In particular, service and support became the top priority and equipment sales dropped to the bottom of the list. It seems that customers and prospects in our target market had plenty of ideas about where to use computers and for what benefit. Many had purchased computers and software. The problem was that they didn't have anyone to turn to when things went wrong.

This situation was best illustrated by a real estate broker who reported that the computer she bought at a seminar titled computers in real estate offices was now primarily used to "Fill up a shelf". A new ribbon and properly hooking up the printer along with some basic operating instruction got that installation back on track.

 
How's this for a Laptop?
Notice the tiny amber non-graphic
screen on this 35 pound Osborne
luggable computer.
 
We also discovered early a lesson we never want to forget. When a customer says they have a problem, they really do have a problem. Even if the technician has explained how to do that operation to that user a hundred times, if it affects the profitability of our customer, we have to answer that call NOW! If it is the customer's top priority (Which is usually the case), then it becomes our top priority also. We can't and won't take on more customers than we can support.

The other lesson learned early is that equipment sales is not a high priority. The reason is simple - There is no profit in hardware (Or packaged software) sales. During the first year we were in business, the first computer Superstore opened a branch office in Atlanta and began consistantly sell equipment for prices lower (Often far lower) than we were paying to buy the same items directly from the manufacturers or from distributors. We decided not to sell equipment - just service. Our customers objected very loudly. It seems that they liked buying everything from one source -- having one vendor responsible for everything.  As a result, we still sell computers and related hardware and software.

A number of operating concepts evolved early. Incidently, these have not changed over the years. Our guiding principles are:

We will do whatever is necessary to earn the trust and confidence of our clients in all of our activities.
We will avoid computer jargon in discussions with our customers.  There seems to be a tendancy among computer technicians to impress (or confuse) people with fancy words they don't understand.  Our goal is to communicate, not to impress or confuse.  We must explain things in simple terms that everyone can understand. 
Small firms (25 Employees or less) are the target customer base for our product and services. We don't turn away large companies or home computer buyers, we just don't actively recruit them.
Service and support are the primary product of the organization. We will sell hardware and software only if it is not available elsewhere or if it offers some signifigant advantage to our customer. Often the advantage is reliability or useful life expectency of the equipment. If the customer is better served by aquiring equipment from another source, it is our responsibility to tell the customer of that fact.
The customer is Always right.  If any customer feels that they did not get their money's worth, they are correct and proper adjustments will be made.  We will redouble our efforts to make sure that customer is properly served in the future.
We have seen many changes in the intervening years but our point of greatest pride is the fact that almost all of the customers we had during those first turbulant years are still our customers today.

When we started Management Insights, we were cautiously optimistic, but we could not have anticipated the degree of change coming. Both hardware and software continue to improve every year.  We are most surprised at the degree to which technology has become so vital a part of everyone's professional and private lives.  In less than 2 decades, the internet has replaced the telephone, radio & TV as the communication medium of the world.  It has been an interesting ride so far.  We are eagerly looking forward to what further advances are on tap during the next 20-years.