Robert J Morton

Personal Project Generic Systems Flow Model of a Business: Right from when I started my own business in 1976, I allocated time to in-house research and development. This was the very first of my personal projects.

I viewed the business's tangible operations of receiving, processing and delivering materials, goods or services as the dynamic energy of the business. I viewed the financial resources as its stored potential energy.

This model was developed in great detail from which was produced a 'control model' of demarkable and interfaceable software subsystems such as sales, purchase and nominal ledgers, payroll, production and stock control, order processing and despatch. Two other areas, namely, market control and automatic budget and cash-flow control were also identified. Since no software addressing these areas was known of at the time I chose these for development [1976-79].

I did a detailed systems analysis and design in both these areas resulting in the development of an automatic budgeting and cash-flow control system. The market control system continued to be developed over the next 11 years and became the commercially available package known as EBS Marketeer.