“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” â So says Leo Colston, the subject of L.P. Hartleyâs famous novel The Go Between. Most of all, this is true of the worlds of business and computing when we look back to 1968 from the vantage point of the present day. Despite the inroads into the popular imagination made by shows like Mad Men, the overwhelming impression one has of business life in the 1960s is of a rather more innocent, simpler time: the image of men in tailored suits conducting business deals in a formalistic and gentlemanly manner, their days punctuated by long and boozy lunches. This world, in which old boysâ networks rather than social networking sites were the order of the day; when computers were frequently bigger than the plant machinery they counted or controlled; when âbugsâ in computers more often than not were literal bugs nestling in the works â seems to be separated from the ruthless, iconoclastic, fast-paced and carnivorous world of post-1980s economic life by a whole lot more than 46 years.Â
But one thing has remained constant in those 46 years: BACS payments. Invented in 1968 by Dennis Gladwell of the Joint Stock Banks Clearing Committee, BACS began life as the Inter-Bank Computer Bureau, it cut out the time-consuming and irrational process of paper-based transfers between banks. Today, thanks to constantly-improving BACS software, BACS is continuing to cut down on paper usage, and make payments more reliable and rapid, for thousands of businesses around the world. Since 2005 the service has been moved from a telephone-based system to BACSTEL-IP servers, and BACS has really come into its own as an online service, making for even faster transfers.Â
Even though some other services are challenging for its crown as the worldâs biggest payment transfer service, over 5 billion BACS payments are made every year, and while some services may claim to have faster systems than the BACS software, the majority of all the wage-earners in the UK still receive their wages via BACS.
The continued dominance of this banking behemoth means that the BACS-accredited training schemes offered by Bottomlineâs dedicated educators, who know the BACS system inside and out, are of irreplaceable value for businesses â and the same goes for the BACS and Faster Payments software which Bottomline services have developed. When it comes to the leading worldwide payments system, Bottomline Technologies lead the way in BACS software.
Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.
http://www.bottomline.co.uk/
537a6cc611d24