Installing A System That Works;

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No formula exists for appplying information technology to a growing company that will assure success. And there are costs of applying technology that are easily overlooked.

PhoneMail, for instance, looked like a great way to battle paper within the Mrs. Fields organization. Debbi Fields wanted to be able to talk to her store managers and wanted them to be able to talk to her without the formality or the delay inherent in paper memos. Voila, PhoneMail -- a computerized system that answers your phone, takes messages, stores them, plays them back, and transfers them to other people. But Debbi soon found herself with scores of messages and no way to classify them by importance and no way to skim quickly through them. Even the computer's memory began to choke on the glut of mail. For routine communications between one person at headquarters and hundreds of store managers in the field, high-tech PhoneMail didn't work.

But FormMail does. Debbi still uses PhoneMail to pass routine messages on to the field. That puts her voice into every store. Managers can still phone her, too. But for routine messages on less than acute issues, Debbi doesn't need to hear their voices. So the managers call up the FormMail program on their personal computers, type in their messages, and the boss can scan through them all quickly the next morning.

Using appropriate technology is more important than using technology.

Giving technology to people in doses they can handle is another principle the Fieldses try to practice. "It's not the lack of technology that's slowing us down," says Randy, "but the rate at which people can become comfortable with it."

To increase the rate, they make the technology look as simple as possible. The software programs are tutorial and menu driven. If store managers can put a plug into a wall socket, they can operate the PCs that Park City supplies.

But why would store managers want to use one? They wouldn't unless, as at the cookie stores, their efforts are rewarded by feedback that helps them save time and energy. At La Petite Boulangerie (LPB) stores, only recently acquired by Mrs. Fields Inc., the computer isn't yet the manager's friend. LPB store managers have to punch numbers into the machine, but they, unlike the cookie store managers, get nothing in return. There's no data base yet for LPB stores, so the machine, in effect, doesn't know anything useful it can send back. Temporarily, the new computers in LPB stores are a one-way communication channel, just another burden on a busy manager. In many companies, that's all the computer ever is. At LPB, at least, there will soon be a concrete payback when managers get interactive software that they can call on for help.

And the cost of installing technology? If a particular technology won't pay back its full cost in two years or less, according to Mrs. Fields's management information systems director Paul Quinn, they don't buy it. They recaptured the cost of the in-store Tandy computers, Quinn says, in well under two years by eliminating touch-tone reporting of daily store operating data and reducing huge telephone toll charges.