UK Y2K watchdog Action 2000 has set up a mentoring service in which large companies can pass on their accumulated Y2K wisdom to the smaller fry which make up their supply chains. The scheme benefits each party. The corporates ensure that the companies that service them are aware of the dangers and more likely to be ready, and the smaller firms themselves acquire the multinationals’ millennial savoir-faire and avoid the same mistakes. At least, that’s the theory.
Out of 90,000 small and medium-sized businesses, Action 2000 reckons it will sign up 10,000 for the mentoring seminars. The corporate firms will host these sessions, with the watchdog providing all the necessary literature as well as speakers from its 20-strong roster of Bug Experts. The idea is to broaden the thinking of all from concentrating on internal IT systems to focusing on how failures in the systems of partners, suppliers or customers could affect companies’ own computing, or vice-versa.
Action 2000 is currently in the middle of its ‘Last Chance’ media campaign, a final attempt to awaken small yet slothful British businesses and convince them that the millennium means more than a three-day holiday.
