The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

We had a bit of a team-building event last night, by which I mean we took the other lot down the pub and dismantled social barriers over a few pints. Our new Head of Group IT (GIT) seems like a pleasant enough chap, for a techie, although his only experience of the property industry is watching Phil and Kirsty.

Anyway, we got talking and it turns out we support the same team. Having established that while I might share his love of the beautiful game, I wasn't quite so enthused about our new IT system, he bet me a tenner that by the end of the night, he could change my mind.

I've been getting to grips with our new computerised regime and have been compliance personified in diligently updating the system with the branch's entire portfolio. By which I mean I got Tracy doing data entry. But I'm inclined to agree that it will get easier to maintain on an ongoing basis.

I must be showing a bit too much flair for this IT malarkey, because yesterday one of the upstarts tried to explain the difference between a database and our business intelligence system. Apparently, data is only half the story. Or doesn't tell a story at all. To be useful, you have to process the data into insight, in the way an oil company refines crude oil, which is valuable, into petrol, which is really valuable. I suppose that would make the business intelligence software the oil refinery in his tortured analogy.

My wife has got a lot to answer for. We were having a conversation last night (at least, I was verbally unloading about my day and she was nodding in the right places) and I mentioned that all of this new emphasis on data at work is making me distinctly uneasy.

Then she went all assertive on me. According to her, I'm already reliant on data, whether I like it or not, and all my teeth-gnashing and resistance is futile. She reminded me that I enjoy the odd flutter at the races and that studying the form is basically a kind of analysis. And I like the fact that our TV box records programmes it "thinks" I will like based on what I've watched in the past, similar to my online book seller's recommendation when a new John Grisham comes out.

If I'd wanted to be a number cruncher, I would probably have gone into some kind of glamorous, top-secret espionage role, cracking codes and furthering the interests of international diplomacy. But I chose to become an estate agent because I'm good with people and property.

I didn't join this practice to sit in front of a computer but that appears to be part and parcel of my "job evolution" since the merger. We have this new system to capture all the sales and lettings properties, plus every interaction with vendors, landlords, prospective purchasers, tenants, even solicitors and surveyors. But I'm perfectly capable of remembering what I said to the owner of 73 Orchard Gardens yesterday without inputting it into a computer.