Mark Crichton has
been involved with computers since the mid 1970’s and with the p.c. since it’s inception in the early 1980’s. His journey has taken him from Mainframes on Unix, Novell networks, Windows peer to peer networks and on to N.T. At present he has specialised in Microsoft Small Business Server which he feels is ideally suited to New Zealand’s predominantly
small business dominated economy.
Mark has been involved with many different types of businesses from personnel recruitment, department store retailing , trust administration, wholesaling and distribution and 8 years specialisation in the clothing manufacture industry. During this time he designed, programmed and implemented numerous systems in dBase. The most significant of which was a complete manufacturing system for the clothing industry which encompassed the entire process from range design, production planning and forecasting to invoicing through to general ledger which he developed over 8 years while employed as the Financial Controller for Peerless Shirts Manufacturer’s in South Africa. The system controlled product of 3000 garments per day, and was also used by two other public companies.
The main factor which got Mark interested in programming was the; inability of standard packages to do the “whole job”. “It was frustrating having to work around gaps in packaged software with time consuming spreadsheets and manual reports when the whole job could be done 100% accurately with the push of a button if the program was tailor made. It’s a bit like a garment… it either fits 100% or not at all… who would wear a shirt with one sleeve. In October 96 Mark, his wife Cindy and 3 children immigrated to New Zealand. A move which has opened new doors and some exciting opportunities. Here he contracted to a large safety company and stabilised systems for a 25 branch wholesale and retail operation, worked with Citrix Winframe connecting 7 branches on CBA for a stationery retailer and 2 years on Prophet during which time he wrote a financial forecasting module. This was extensively used to move the management philosophy from re-active to pro-active management. During his 25 years working Mark has gained a broad spectrum of skills encompassing every aspect of company operations, from purchasing, production, warehousing, importing, exporting, wholesale, retail, sales analysis and marketing. An ability for introducing new ideas and productivity increases through new technologies, staff motivation, and thinking outside the square. A special passion for productivity and process improvement. The ability to analyse the requirements for change, to develop a solution and to implement it. All this is now done through using the Microsoft Solutions Framework which provides a consistent set of guidelines for rapidly building enterprise architecture through
versioned releases. Mark is a qualified accountant - 20 years of accounting experience and has a B.Com degree in Business Economics and Industrial Psychology as well as a B.Arts in Psychology and Philosophy.
Mark specialises in systems and software development using Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Small Business Server.
