Use a Navigator but KEEP THINKING
Some weeks ago we went to Austria for a ski-vacation. Because we can only plan a break during the school vacations there are some challenges to face.
One of the larger challenges is the journey to the resort an back. With 50% of the NL in vacation an many people traveling in the same week to Austria the roads are really crowded. This requires some careful planning and this where the problem starts.
The current practice is that drivers throw away their paper maps, take their navigator (Tom Tom / Navtec/ Garmin....) and let this device plan the trip. Most devices start with planning the shortest/fastest trip and use (dynamic) travel information to avoid traffic-jams as much as possible. The journey starts..... The effect, not only problems on the main roads but also on the secondary roads = chaos everywhere !
This year we tried a new approach. Yes we used the navigator + dynamic traffic planning but we also used a reliable advice from the ANWB (Royal Dutch Touring Club) who is very experienced in this field. They provided suggestions which road to take based on their experience, the planned work on the roads and weather conditions. During our journey we had a lot of 'arguments' with our navigator but at the end we saved 25% of the travel time compared with people who traveled using the guidance from their navigator.
Learning - there is an area for improvement in this field. Think ahead and keep thinking during the trip.... Ideally the traffic-info should be mixed with high-level advices from 'the field' people or organizations who have high-level knowledge about the topic.
This is exactly the point I would like to make in this blog.
More and more I see IT teams a consolidation phase where they let go(experience=expensive) people. The assumption is that this can be compensated by intelligent tools (the Navigators) provided by the Hardware and Software suppliers. True, this is an option for the short-term and not always targeted at your challenges, the golden 80% of the cases.
But do not forget that there is always a 20% of cases left that is responsible for 80% of the total costs. What is the plan to cover this ?
Here you could see if Support could provide help. Take a look at the next generation support Experience Did you explore the effectiveness of the Health Checks ? or what is your experience with the Communities in My Oracle Support. Consider to support your team by experienced people from Advanced Customer Services.
All valuable offerings provided by support to enable you to have a safe trip and save 25% of your costs.
Looking forward to your experiences!
Hans
