Garbage in...

It's not always the technology that lets folk down. More often, it's the quality of the information held in a system that's the problem. Especially when it is a contact management system with incorrect information about your contacts in it. All the more embarrassing if your company sells such systems to its clients, and advises them on the need for clean data, which is checked and kept clean...

So embarrassment all round for a systems company whose salesperson had made an appointment with me to tell me more about their products and company. When the salesperson left the company, someone was asked to contact me to cancel the appointment but... they had an incorrect phone number for me, an incorrect email address and an incorrect web address!

The lesson here is about how important it is to make sure information is accurately recorded.

And for me, the lesson is to check with people I plan to meet the day before an appointment just to make sure it's still happening!