‘Bedrijfsblindheid’, Tracer and Unyte

‘Bedrijfsblindheid’ or ‘Business Blindness’. Don’t we suffer all once in a while?
An action on your computer that became so common that you could do it blind folded. Then all of a sudden you do something wrong and you don’t understand why and how. You completely miss where you went wrong, you can’t recall because you handled automatically.
You can spend hours on trying to find out why you all of a sudden, can’t log on to a program for which you use the same password for years.

And this happened to me. I work with Tracer Systems to file my clients and everything what has to do with them: correspondence, billing, products, hours etc. I learned to work with it years ago at the office of one of my clients when I was still on their pay-roll.

Tracer Systems has developed a single, fully integrated flexible cross platform CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and HRM (Human Resource Management) solution to assist customers in keeping their competitive advantage. The possibilities are endless. To me Tracer is the best program ever and custom made to your preferences. Support is excellent.
Tracer is on my external disk with a shortcut to my desktop. This works nicely for me. And I use the same cryptical password as with my client. No mistakes possible.

For what ever odd reason, the shortcut disappeared from my desktop and I created a new one. But when I logged on again, my password got refused. I tried all sorts of combinations but no access was granted to me.
Back to the old password that came with Tracer during the installation. But again a negative result.

I contacted Tracer’s support via Skype and invited them via Unyte to work on my computer. The wonderful thing about Unyte is that you can give the other party control over one program instead of your whole desktop. But what ever support tried, no access.
I was asked to send a .xml file, peace of cake with Skype’s File Transport.
They gave me a new password and I could log on again. Phew, what a relief.
Tracer opened all files and…………… goodness, NO!!! All my data were gone: all my clients, all the invoices, all the products. Tracer was empty and remained empty.
I was almost in tears. Busy as a little bee, I couldn’t afford spending hours and hours on updating my data.

My Skype IM ‘shouted: HELP. Tracer’s Skype IM replied with: “Did you accidentally open a copy of Tracer??” I felt as stupid as one of my formal clients from the time I was co-owner of a Sunscreen and Awning Company who shouted: “I am not going to pay for a remote controlled Awning that doesn’t even make a noise when I switch it on!!” I asked my client: “Did you accidentally disconnect the electricity plug?”

Mind you, I did not even know I had a copy of Tracer! One is never too old to learn.

Tracer needed some minor changes and again I was asked to send a file. “It is a biggy this time, could be 20 MB!’ support said. Doh, Skype happily handled a 92 MB log a few days before. In no time the file was transferred, altered and sent back.

“That Unyte is great, amazing what you can do with Skype!” support said. “I am still learning about new features”.

I could only agree….