Compu-Clearing to re-open Durban office

In the freight system industry, changes in technology often dictate company structure and policy, according to Arnold Garber, chairman of freight system specialists, Compu-Clearing. Even something as apparently simple as the necessary or justifiable location of branch offices can be a subject of technological change. And that, Garber told FTW, has been the case with CC’s Durban branch, which is now set to reappear on the Kwa Zulu Natal business stage. “It was technology that made us close the original office,” Garber said, “and it is technology again that makes us re-open it.” This because computer procedures and programming have changed rapidly in the past two decades. Back in the 1980s, Compu- Clearing decided to open an office in the port city for two reasons. “The first was because – for our customers to be connected to Compu-Clearing main-frame servers – they needed to have a Diginet line all the way to Johannesburg,” said Garber. “This made sense to the companies that had branches all over the country. But, for enterprises that only had an operation in Durban, it made no sense. So we decided to set up a server room there.” The need for a help desk was a second reason for the Durban location. “In those years,” Garber added, “the concept of phoning a Johannesburg number – or even a toll-free number – and speaking to someone in another city, was first of all expensive. It was also problematic and not the order-of-the-day.” But technology changed all this. First, according to Garber, the advent of the cell-phone and a reduction in Telkom rates for broadband calls made phoning anywhere around the country – indeed the world – common practice. At the same time, on the system connection side, Telkom had introduced its ‘frame relay network’. Customers in Durban only needed to have a line to the nearest node – which was usually in the same suburb where they had their offices. “That,” he said, “eliminated the need for having a server in Durban, and we could concentrate all our computing power in Johannesburg.” Durban then closed. But now there has been a new technological development on the web which has made Compu-Clearing once again look at opening an office in Durban. Programmes such as ‘Go To Meeting’ or ‘Team Viewer’ on the internet, according to Garber, have now made it possible to run training for people in Durban with the trainer being in Johannesburg. So Compu-Clearing is settingup a training and support centre in Durban to run all the company’s courses, but with the trainers still in Johannesburg. “You sit in a boardroom in Durban with a big screen and with loud speakers – and you can converse and interact with the trainer without any difficulties,” Garber said. “This latest technological change has once again made a Durban office for Compu-Clearing a justifiable investment.”