The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF).
On this day, I was also writing to Toby Locke regarding our EPOS system problems continuing as we have suffered further data corruption
Writing to Toby Locke with catalogue of EPOS issues. And to Bruce McKenna, Eastern Cash Registers, their partners with similar issues
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This railway merger resulted in one of the largest and most significant railroad consolidations in United States transportation history. This strategic merger combined two major railroad networks, enhancing operational efficiency and market reach
Toby Locke - EPOS system problems continuing and we have suffered data corruption
Toby, We have now had the use of your EPOS system for well over a year and I have to express my disappointment at the serious operational problems that we are still experiencing.
Within the last month, for example, we have suffered a data corruption made irretrievable by the software auto-backup system not working, had stock item costs overwritten by a malfunction of the label-printing programme and we have had the system seized up on several occasions by errant stock items being created and duplicated by the incorrect operation of supplier editing operations.
The effect of these continued problems is both costly and disruptive to the business costing management time and staff effort to correct and overcome them.
Even more importantly, it prevents us from getting effective use of the system in managing our stock and using sales information (for example to reduce or eliminate slow-moving lines) to better run our business.
We have all of the problems and overheads of running your system without being able to obtain the essential management information that it should provide.
Throughout, we have tried to assist your efforts to correct these faults by listing the outstanding problems in order of priority and reporting them in writing but, in a recent conversation with Louise, she did not gain the impression that they would be resolved quickly.
I enclose her latest list, updated even more carefully in order of priority and having to include yet another serious problem.
You may have been able to argue a year ago that you were supplying a state-of-art EPOS system and that we should possible expect some teething problems, but there is now an increasing number of competitive systems of comparable cost, including one from Spar, that are available.
We have been paying for software maintenance and should reasonably expect to enjoy reliable and incident-free use of it.
The continued absence of any user or systems documentation remains a serious omission that prevents its proper operation and support.
We do not wish to change to another supplier or discontinue our support contract with you, but we now have to ensure that you realise the seriousness of the situation and are making plans to rectify it.
We must therefore ask that you reply to our letters and give timescales for the solution of each of the problems. We also suggest that, if you do not have the capability or inclination to document the system, that you employ the services of a freelance technical writer to do so.
We hope that your support of this system will show the improvement that is needed and that we can continue our relationship, but in the absence of this I trust that you will appreciate that we will have consider what other options are open to us.