Being a magical and legendary figure doesn’t guarantee that everything works without issues.
Santa Claus recently reached out to Infraspeak for some help. Mr. Claus wrote to us because he was struggling to solve a multitude of logistical problems that were threatening to leave millions of children without Christmas presents.
These problems were all a result of failures and unexpected events in The Factory.
We were interested in finding out how his operations have improved since we helped to set up Infraspeak’s platform in the Factory.
Santa Claus kindly agreed to give the following interview just a few hours before he and his reindeer set off to deliver another year’s worth of presents around the world.
You can read the transcript of our conversation below:
Infraspeak: Good evening, Santa Claus! Thank you for finding time to give this interview.
Santa Claus: The pleasure is mine! Just a quick point though… It’s noon right now, not the evening! There’s not really sunshine in the North Pole around this time of year. Let’s get started then.
Infraspeak: Sure! Let’s talk about what brought us here, then. What inspired you to reach out to us?
Santa Claus: Well… everything went wrong. Without a well-organised preventive maintenance plan, The Factory was in disarray. The elves were working double time to try stay on top of all the breakdowns that we were experiencing. Especially in preparation for the Christmas Period, the failures started to ‘snowball’ out of control and the elves were way behind their toy schedule.
The Magic Machines stopping were one thing, but the situation with the reindeer was just unbearable! Sometimes, just as we were about to take off, they would kick a candy cane or slip on a mince pie and they would get pretty severe injuries.
With an odd number of reindeer, I would either have to leave a healthy reindeer behind or just accept that we would be going around in circles because there were more reindeer on the left hand side. We also left many children without presents due to problems in the factory: broken machines, missing parts… what a mess! A nightmare!
Infraspeak: What about with Infraspeak?
Santa Claus: Since we starting using your IMMP, everything has been much better! Elves no longer need to make highly inefficient, and quite frankly, dangerous elvish-pyramids to try push out-of-reach buttons on The Magic Machines because they are experiencing far few malfunctions.
As for the blasted reindeer situation, Rudolph, Dancer, Vixen and Co. are now all identified with an NFC tag; the maintenance elves can easily access relevant information on their dietary requirements and intervention history for injuries. I am ‘ho-so’ happy to announce that we have a very healthy group of reindeer!
Infraspeak: What difference has Infraspeak made in controlling your paper usage?
Santa Claus: The difference is the size of an iceberg! Before Infraspeak, everything, from work schedules to intervention reports, was registered on wrapping paper. It took up too much space, it tore too easily and we kept accidentally writing on the shiny, coloured side which meant our notes were illegible.
Infraspeak: Didn’t you ever think of using white, normal paper… instead of wrapping paper?
Santa Claus: White paper?! Try NO paper! There’s absolutely no need for paper with Infraspeak! None! It’s briilliant!
Infraspeak: No, I mean before Infraspeak. Why were you using wrapping paper?
Santa Claus: [pause] Ho-well, that’s all in the past, now! Infraspeak is the future! Now everything is stored in the system. What is important is that children no longer receive presents wrapped in paper that has a record of interventions from the factory. No more badly wrapped presents Christmassy patterns ruined by annotations of KPIs!. That happened sometimes.
Infraspeak: Is there any else you’d like to highlight?
Santa Claus: Communication also improved incredibly. Before Infraspeak, the elves didn’t use any technology for communication; All communication was elf-to-elf.
Everyone was yelling. All the time. With so many elves squeaking about The Factory, my poor ears couldn’t keep up! At the ripe old age of 1748 years old, I missed all sorts of crucial bits of information that caused many problems.
Thankfully, the elves can now report everything through the Infraspeak app which makes everything simpler, and more importantly, squeak-free.
Infraspeak: Very well. So, to close the interview — how was the onboarding?
Santa Claus: It was super simple. The Infraspeak team spent many hours with us at The Factory listing all the equipment on the app. Two weeks later, every elf was reporting failures in Infraspeak Next. We tried to train the reindeers to report failures too, but unfortunately, the smartphones’ touchscreen doesn’t lend itself very nicely to hooves.
Infraspeak: Is there any final comment you’d like to make?
Santa Claus: Infraspeak is an amazing solution. We’ve implemented it in our factory in the North Pole, and also in the lesser-known branch of the South Pole. We have had great results with our penguin-powered sleigh. The penguins are identified with waterproof NFC tags! Don’t you worry about that.
Infraspeak: Thank you very much for your time, Santa! We hope we can continue to help you with this beautiful mission of yours.
Santa Claus: No, we thank you! Infraspeak is like an elf to us — it’s part of the family! HO! HO! HO!
Merry Christmas!