Tag Archives: Insertion orders

1993-2006 TSI: AdDept Client: Foley’s

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May Co. division based in Houston. Continue reading →

I remember getting two phone calls from Beverly Ingraham1, the Advertising Director at the May Company division based in Houston, Foley’s. The first one came in early 1993 before we had hired Doug Pease to handle our marketing. I spoke with Beverly about AdDept, TSI’s administrative system for large retail advertisers. She had learned of it from one of our mailings.

Foley’s flagship store at 1110 Main St. was demolished in 2013. I am not sure what replaced it.

I informed her that we had installed the system at a “sister division”, Hecht’s. I emphasized that it had been helping the employees at Hecht’s with their monthly May Company reports as well as many quotidian administrative tasks. She asked me to fly to Houston and show the system to them. Although I don’t remember the occasion, I must have spent a day or two talking with potential users, primarily Richard Roark2 in the business office at Foley’s off in one of the top floors of the flagship store on Main Street. The demo must have been at an IBM office. Sue might have come with me to Houston, but neither of us remembers the trip. We met Beverly and Linda Knight, the Senior VP of Advertising3. The people at Foley’s all seemed enthusiastic and exceptionally nice, as they did every time that I visited there.

After we returned to Connecticut, I wrote up a proposal to run the AdDept system on the F10 model that had recently been introduced by IBM. There is little doubt that I also included quotes for some custom programming—I forget the details.

I was very excited about this. I knew that Foley’s advertising must have had money because the May Company had recently merged the D&F division, which had been based in Denver, with Foley’s. The combined operation would be run from Houston. That gave them stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. The May Co.’s purse strings were bound to be a little looser than usual.

I was also excited because I was quite certain that most of the work that we had done for Hecht’s would be usable for Foley’s with only minor adjustments. For once we seemed to be on familiar ground.

Over the next week or two I talked with Richard Roark about some of the items in the proposal. When I finally got the second call from Beverly, she did not immediately say that the project had been approved. I had to ask her. She said, “Oh, yeah. Sure.” She then corrected my assumption that Richard Roark would be the liaison. She assured me that she would tell me who it was, and she did a little later.

I remember very well my first visit to Foley’s in May of 1993 to install the system. I flew on Continental Airlines from Bradley to Intercontinental Airport4, which was twenty-three miles north of the city center. I took a shuttle bus to the Hyatt Regency Hotel, which was only a couple of blocks from Foley’s headquarters.

The Hyatt featured a lobby that was both luxurious and sometimes very noisy. A bar was right in the middle of it, and the area above was open all the way up to the roof, thirty stories up. It was like an echo chamber or a natural amplifier. So, half of the rooms had windows that viewed the lobby. After my first stay there I always requested a room with an outside window.

That’s the Hyatt’s bar way down there in the middle of the lobby.

The elevators all had glass walls on the lobby side. I am not ordinarily affected by heights or tight locations, but the rapid descent in these glass cages made me quite uneasy.

I distinctly remember my first stroll to Foley’s from the Hyatt. It was March. I knew that I would not need the overcoat that I had worn to the airport in Connecticut, but I did have on a wool suit. The lobby of the Hyatt was very cool. I went through the revolving door and I was smashed in the face by the heat and humidity. It was like walking into a sauna.

By the time that I swam walked the few blocks to Foley’s big brick building, I had grown tolerant of the humidity. However, I was not expecting to see ten or so mendicants sitting on the sidewalk near the employees’ entrance. This crew was not the aggressive kind I had encountered in my life in Detroit and visits to New York. They just seemed hopeless. I don’t know why, but I was shocked to see this in Texas.

I don’t actually remember too much else about that day. That is a good thing. In TSI’s thirty-five year history we only had a few near-disasters or crises, and I distinctly remember each one.

I recall that one of our first big assignments for Foley’s was when the Houston Chronicle bought out the Houston Post and its assets in 1995. Foley’s was by far the largest advertiser in both papers. They ran dozens of ads every week, and the newspaper coordinators had already recorded the schedules for both papers for several months ahead.

Their first requirement was a list of all ads that were scheduled to run in the Post but not the Chronicle. That was not difficult; I wrote a query to produce the list. They would need to decide what to do with those ads and adjust the schedules for the Chronicle where necessary.

Next, they needed to delete all of the ads scheduled for the Post. This was was a little more difficult. I had to replicate exactly the process that would have occurred if they canceled them individually. That meant that I had to write history records for each deletion, and all subsidiary files and summary records needed to be updated as if the deletions were being done one at a time.

Finally, they needed me to find all the ads in the Chronicle that were full depth (the longer dimension), which, if memory serves, was twenty-one inches. All of these ads would be one-half inch deeper because the Post’s presses, which the Chronicle planned to use going forward, cut the paper to that size. That meant that the costs (Foley’s kept track of actual costs billed by the papers and costs marked up to reflect production expenses that they showed the merchants) had to be recalculated.

Since any paper could change its size (and many subsequently did), I made this one into a program that could be attached to a menu available to the users. Since AdDept’s rate calculations had been externalized into separate callable modules, this was also not too difficult. History records and updates of subsidiary files and summaries were required for this step, too.

They needed all of this in just a couple of days. There was no test environment. No one helped me, and no one tested the code that I produced. On TSI’s developmental system I simulated a few ads of each type and tested the code on them. When I felt satisfied with it, I sent the code to Foley’s over the phone lines, crossed my fingers, and ran the programs.

I must have done a pretty good job. No one complained.

Visits to Foley’s were frequent during the nineties. Sometimes they wanted training, but usually they wanted to describe enhancements that they desired. Two of the trips had a comical aspect. The first one was when I asked Sue to take one of the early trips for me. I cannot remember what the objective for the trip was. She did not have a credit card in those days, and she forgot to bring any cash. Fortunately, someone at Foley’s cashed a check for her, or she might have needed to join the beggars clustered by the employees’ entrance.

On another occasion I wore my running shoes on the flight to Houston. When I had arrived in Houston, as usual I took the shuttle to the Hyatt. When I opened my suitcase at the Hyatt, I was aghast to discover that I had brought only one leather shoe. How could my valet have been so careless?

I recalled that I had seen a Payless Shoe Source, at one time a division of the May Company, between the hotel and Foley’s. I bought a pair of black leather shoes at Payless for $20. They were so uncomfortable that I threw them away as soon as I arrived home after the trip. However, they saved me from embarrassment during the three days of that visit. I figured that my misbegotten purchase was the equivalent of a bargain-priced rental for less than $7 per day.

One of Robert’s most important jobs was to keep the printers clean and full of paper.

Our first liaison at Foley’s was Robert Myers5. I think that he must have come from the IT department. He helped to set up a system whereby the store managers could view the contents of their ads on systems in their stores before the ads were run. He tried to get me (of all people) to market the arrangement to other retailers. I suppose that he meant that we should try to offer it as an enhancement to AdDept, but the guts of what he had done involved infrastructure that was unique to Foley’s. I didn’t understand most of it, and I was too busy with things that I understood a lot better to devote time to learning it.

Robert attended nearly all of the training sessions when I came to Houston, and he did a good job of writing up software requests when I was not around. He was one of our best liaisons.

That is Robert talking and facing the camera. The bearded guy in the foreground is Doug Pease6. This picture was not taken at Foley’s. I don’t recognize the other three.

Robert once expressed the opinion to me that XML would become the solution to all of the interoperability problems of software systems. I had read a little about it, but I did not understand it. He did not do a good job of explaining it. He may have been right, but to my knowledge XML never entered the main stream among software developers. TSI implemented a lot of interfaces with software from other companies. Sometimes we sent them files, and sometimes AdDept received and processed files. We never considered using XML.

One day Robert took me on a road trip. This must have been over a weekend, probably the one in which I oversaw the migration from the F10 that Foley’s initially purchased in 1993 to a faster model with more capacity, the 270.

We drove down7 to the Johnson Space Center (now called Space Center Houston). We spent some time at the exhibits that they have about manned space flight. It was OK, but ever since I was required in 1967 as a member of the varsity debate team at the University of Michigan (explained here) to argue against the concept of putting an American on the moon, it has always seemed to me that it was an expensive and dangerous idea with very little payoff. So, I was not as gung-ho as most of the visitors to the center.

I found notes that indicated that I went out to dinner with Robert Myers and his wife in 2000. I have no clear recollection of the occasion.

The May Company determined that AdDept should be installed in all of its department store divisions. The process of reaching this decision is described here. Robert was assigned by the May Company to help with the installations at several other divisions. On a few occasions we crossed paths at other divisions.

Left to right are Charisse Cossey, who was the TSI liaison after Robert, Sharon Mullins (the second-in-command), Beverly Ingraham, Ralph Annunziato, and Angela Hurry. That’s my big blue mug in the foreground. This room was called “The Wall Room” because the ads for the current week were always displayed on the wall.

Beverly Ingraham had a nameplate on her desk that said “Bevo”. I don’t know whether she was an alumna of UT8, or if it was a play on her name. Maybe both.

I remember doing one project that Beverly was especially interested in. The IT department was able to provide us with sales by department by store by day. I wrote a program to convert this file into a usable format for AdDept programs. We then used the information in reports and screens for each merchant that showed them in each market the total costs of their ads (or parts of ads) and the associated sales.

The ability to provide this kind of information was a big feather in Beverly’s cap. This was the first of several TSI projects aimed at evaluating the productivity of the advertising. The concept was actually more useful as a sales tool to show the power and reach of the AdDept system than as a practical tool for the advertisers. If more than one media was employed for a sales event, it was impossible to attribute which of the ads produced the results.

I don’t have distinct memories of most of the projects that we undertook for Foley’s. For the ones after Denise Bessette became VP of Software Development (as explained here) I only wrote up the requests. I don’t have an excuse for forgetting the ones between 1993 and 1997 I probably did most of the coding myself.

This is Robert at a buffet lunch at the department. I don’t remember the reason for it.

I unearthed some notes for a visit in 2000 about insertion orders for newspapers. Foley’s two newspaper coordinators were Hedy Wolpa9 and a lady named Leila, whose last name I don’t remember. I was shocked when they told me that they had not been faxing insertion orders to the papers directly from the AS/400 because they could only order by date, not by publication. They thought that this made it difficult for them to specify positioning (such as “Back page of main section”) while ordering. I also learned that they also did not realize that they could specify much longer special instructions as well.

This would never do. They had paid us to provide insertion orders in the precise format that Foley’s had specified, and they had paid IBM for the faxing hardware and software. We might have even gotten a commission on that. Furthermore, TSI needed for them to be ordering in AdDept so that we could switch them to using the product that we were about to release, AxN (described here).

I think that this picture was taken at Filene’s. Robert is seated with two fingers raised. I don’t recognize the other people. That’s definitely my yellow spiral binder on the table.

While I was at Foley’s I wrote a new front end program for the insertion orders. It allowed them to order for one paper at a time. They were very happy; it was just what they wanted.

Denise hated for me to do things like this on the road. She did not want me to modify any code on the fly. I understood that. In this case, however, I thought that it was better to beg forgiveness rather that to ask permission from Denise. The top priority of this trip was to get Foley’s on board for insertion orders. They became an enthusiastic users, and all their papers subscribed to AxN10 a soon as we made it available.

Foley’s was, by most measures, our best client. They used almost every aspect of the system. They even used the SmartPlus interface for broadcast that was originally designed for the GrandAd system for ad agencies. Their agency, which was in Dallas, sent them files with schedules and audit data.

Several Foley’s users also became very adept at using Query/400 to design some of their own reports. They used this product as much as or more than any other client. They sometimes used their queries and a product called ShowCase Strategy without any assistance from TSI.

As of 2000 TSI had delivered and installed approximately 200 custom programming projects to Foley’s.

1. Beverly Ingraham was promoted to Senior Vice President of Advertising at Foley’s in January of 2000. She held that position until the division was dissolved after Macy’s acquired the May Company in 2006. I am pretty sure that she went to the Macy’s Central division in Atlanta and headed the advertising department there for several years. I think that in 2021 she lives in Spring, TX, twelve miles north of the airport. If I am correct, then she is my age and therefore probably retired.

2. Richard Roark’s LinkedIn page is posted here.

3. In 2000 Linda, who was by then known as Linda Knight Quick, resigned as Senior VP of Foley’s to take a job at Penney’s. Foley’s sued to prevent this because of a non-compete clause in her contract. I was unable to determine how the situation was resolved.

41, not 43.

4. In 1997 it was renamed George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

5. I have a note from January of 2000 that indicated that he was doing Internet development for Foley’s IT department using Cold Fusion, but I do not know what he has been up to in the last two decades.He helped me identify some of the people in photos of employees from Foley’s and other May Co. divisions. He also said that his association with TSI changed his life, but he did not explain how.

6. Doug Pease was TSI’s most successful marketing director. Much more can be read about him here. I think that Doug and I must have stopped at Foley’s as part of a marketing trip to Stage Stores, also in Houston. That installation is described here.

7. I wonder if I had a rental car for that trip. Robert lived a long way from downtown Houston. He generally took the bus to work!

8 The mascot of the University of Texas Longhorns is a steer named Bevo. The current one in 2021 is Bevo XV.

9. Hedy Wolpa’s LinkedIn page can be viewed here. She worked at Foley’s for thirty-one years!

10. The design of AxN is described in some detail here.

1991-2007 TSI: AdDept: Federated Department Stores/Macy’s Inc.

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TSI’s dealings with Federated and Macy’s Inc. Continue reading →

Let’s buy Macy’s!

For more than a decade after TSI began marketing AdDept, its software system for retail advertisers, the chain of department stores now known as Macy’s Inc. was called Federated Department Stores (FDS). The company was acquired in the eighties by Robert Campeau, a Canadian real estate magnate. For a short time it was merged with Campeau’s other stores and called Federated and Allied Department Stores. In 1992 the company emerged from bankruptcy as FDS, the same year that Macy’s filed for Chapter 11 protection. In 1994 FDS found enough cash in the cushions of the sofas in the furniture departments of its stores to purchase Macy’s shortly after Santa’s favorite retailer emerged from its own bankruptcy. Details of the takeover can be read here.

In the early nineties I was just beginning to learn about retail in America. It shocked me that a bankrupt company could stiff all of its vendors and then have the wherewithal to buy another company of about the same size. A lot of craziness like this happened in the nineties. I never did figure it all out, and the two companies involved in this transaction were a thorn in the side of TSI for the rest of its existence.

I don’t know why Val used a photo that cut off her chin.

In 1992 FDS had eight regional divisions. Each division produced and placed its own advertising from the divisional headquarters. The first FDS division that contacted TSI about purchasing the AdDept system was the Bon Marché, which was based in Seattle. I was called by Val Walser1, the Director of the Advertising Business Office there. She had received one of TSI’s mailings in late 1989 or early 1990, and she thought that the system might be what they needed. I talked with her in person twice, once at the Retail Advertising Convention in Chicago and once in Seattle. I gave Val a private demonstration in Chicago, and I showed the system to the rest of the team in Seattle. Those encounters have been described in some detail here.

No mention of Federated.

I don’t think that I knew at the time that the Bon Marché was part of FDS. Even if I did, I don’t think that I realized then that the parent company was about to declare bankruptcy. I was inexperienced; I probably made some errors in judgment. Perhaps I made a mistake by proposing a system that would only be minimally sufficient for their existing operation. Maybe we did not follow up often enough or in the best way.

Although Val informed us that she had requested funding for the system, it was never approved, and after a while we did not hear any more from her. We continued to send materials to her periodically. Until I began the research for this entry I was unaware that she had any involvement in deploying a system that was initiated by the FDS division most distant from Washington, Burdines in Florida. Val apparently oversaw the development of the administrative part of the FedAd (or whatever it was called at that time) system. By then her division was known as Macy’s Northwest, which was folded into Macy’s West, a long-time AdDept user, in 2008.

TSI’s fruitless contacts with Burdines have been documented here.

From the beginning I thought that Jordan Marsh, the Boston-based department-store chain, would be a valuable customer for TSI. Like the Bon Marché, Jordan Marsh was actually part of the Allied group before Campeau acquired Federated and merged all the stores into one gigantic chain. At one time there were also Jordan Marsh stores in Florida and San Diego, but by 1991 all of those stores had closed or were no longer controlled from Boston.

Kate Behart, whose career at TSI is described here, arranged for me to do a demo for people from Jordan Marsh’s advertising department at an IBM office. I don’t remember any of the names of employees at Jordan Marsh. In fact, the only things that I remember about our meeting with them were that Kate was very upset that I had used the word “gals” at one point and that they informed us that they wanted our system.

I am sure that Kate must have followed up on the presentation. She was very conscientious. However, nothing came of it.

Bloomingdale’s, the high-end department store with headquarters in New York City, contacted TSI several times. The last of these exchanges of telephone calls was handled by Doug Pease, whose successful marketing career at TSI is detailed here. We certainly sent them detailed materials about AdDept and the AS/400. I might have done a demo for them at the IBM office. I clearly recall that we went to their headquarters in Manhattan and gathered specs about their needs. I can still picture the Manager of the Business Office, who wore a three-piece suit and had a long pony tail. Guys with pony tails were not unusual in the creative and production areas of advertising departments, but he was the only one that I ever saw in the financial area.

Doug followed up on our visit with several telephone calls. At one point he became certain that Bloomies would buy the AdDept system. Nevertheless, not long after he had voiced his certainty, he got the telephone call that dashed his hopes. He never told me the details, but he was visibly upset about it.

One of the biggest disappointments in my career was not being able to land Liberty House, the department store in Hawaii and the Pacific, as a client. When Doug, Sue, and I flew out to Honolulu in December of 1995 to meet with Karen Anderson (detailed here), Liberty House was an independent chain of stores that included both department stores and much smaller stores in locations convenient to tourists. Those stores specialized in “resort ware”.

Macy’s on Union Square in SF.

Our presentation went very well. Karen told Doug in a subsequent conversation that she had requested funding for AdDept, but there was a freeze on capital purchases. The freeze persisted until the company entered bankruptcy in 1998 and closed most of the resort stores. When it emerged from bankruptcy it was gobbled up by FDS. At that point the remaining stores were relabeled as Macy’s, and administrative functions were transferred to Macy’s West in San Francisco, one of TSI’s clients.

So, this was as close as we came to a victory in our dealings with FDS/Macy’s Inc.. Many of the newspapers that had been used by Liberty House still subscribed to AxN in 2014.

AS/400s at FSG. I thought that I had a photo of Len, but I cannot find it.

At some point the AS/400 systems used by the three Macy’s divisions that used AdDept—Macy’s East, Macy’s South, and Macy’s West—were moved to the headquarters of Federated Systems Group (FSG) in Alpharetta, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. I flew down there to consult with Len Miller2, who was in charge of all of the FSG’s AS/400s. I don’t remember exactly what the agenda for this meeting was, but I remember that Len said that long-range plan of FDS was to replace the AS/400 systems with home-grown software running on other platforms. However, he assured me that at that point—soon after the merger with the May Company—it was a very low priority. They would still be using the AS/400s for several years.

My other vivid memory of that day was when we passed a room that contained perhaps twenty desks. At each desk sat someone working on a computer. All of the people were IBM employees who were consultants for Federated.

Len’s predictions both turned out to be true. All of the divisions except Bloomingdale’s were eventually folded into one gigantic Macy’s run from the Herald Square Building in Manhattan. The plan was apparently to use the system built for Burdines and the Seattle division, but it did not have all of the features that the people in New York needed. For several years they maintained AdDept in order to run the Loan Room (merchandise loaned to photo studio for shoots) module that TSI wrote for Macy’s East in the early nineties.

In May or June of 2005 I received a telephone call from Robin Creen3, whose title was Senior Vice-president of Macy’s Corporate Marketing. She wanted me to come to New York to discuss the AdDept and AxN systems. I made an appointment and took Amtrak to Penn Station. Robin instructed me to use the executive elevator at one of the 34th St. entrances rather than the employee’s entrance that I had always used on the other side of the building.

Robin’s office was not in the advertising department. It was on executive row. I don’t remember too much of the meeting, and I cannot locate my notes. I recall that I only got to meet with her once or maybe twice, and I never heard from her or about her again.

I did, however find a copy of a letter that I sent to her on October 7, 2005. Here is the text:

At our last meeting you told me that it was still too early to talk about the future of the existing May Company divisions. Since there have now been several definitive press releases about the makeup of the new Macy’s after the merger, I assume that those restrictions no longer apply.

Needless to say we are concerned about what effect the realignment will have on TSI. We have spent the last 17 years developing AdDept, the software product which has become the standard of the industry for administration of retail advertising departments. The May Company was our largest client.

We know that Federated Department Stores has been working with its Florida division for the last decade or so on a system which overlaps considerably with ours. I am sure that the company has by this time invested a considerable amount of time, money, and manpower in it. It may surprise you to know that I was supposed to be an integral part of the original plan. I met with Mike Rafferty and Gilbert Lorenzo in Huntsville, Alabama, back in the mid-nineties. Their plan at that time was to use AdDept for the accounting functions.

They wanted us to convert our system to run on a PC network using a home-grown relational data base and Microsoft Visual BASIC on each client. To me this seemed like a huge step backwards for us. Their approach would definitely have improved the appearance of AdDept’s front end and provided an integration with the production area, but no one could explain to me how we could possibly support such a system in many locations. The principal problem was that with their proposed architecture someone—presumably TSI—would be required to support both server software and client software. We have never had to support clients—the individual desktop PC’s and Macs. At the time networks were unreliable, Windows was not a mature product, and the Internet was in its infancy. TSI was already supporting a half dozen or more companies, including the two Macy’s divisions, which at the time were not affiliated with Federated. I honestly think that had we participated in the project at the level that they expected, TSI would not have survived as a company. Gilbert and Mike must not have liked my attitude, because we never heard from them again.

Since that time, as I wrote you earlier, most of the rest of the department stores in the country—as well as several other large retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods—have successfully implemented AdDept in their sales promotion departments. They were able to get affordable systems tailored to their requirements. AdDept is not a sexy system, but it gets the job done.

No one in the entire country—no one—has the experience that TSI has garnered over the last 17 years in understanding the intricacies of administration of advertising systems. We are offering that experience to Macy’s Marketing. Four of the seven newly aligned Macy’s divisions—East, West, Midwest, and whatever the Marshall Field’s division is called—are long-time AdDept users. Lord & Taylor also uses AdDept. Moreover, a large number of May Company employees have considerable experience using AdDept in many different areas. If I were in your shoes, I would consider this as a valuable asset.

TSI has a very strong relationship with its users—both at the corporate and division level. If you talk with the people at the May Company, I am sure that they will verify that we have always done what they asked, that we do an excellent job of supporting our product, and that we give them a lot of bang for the buck.

There is one big additional factor. We are not on their payroll. When they wanted to spend money to make the system do new things, they used us. When they were tightening their belts, they did not have to worry about paying the salaries of programmers, system architects, data base administrators, etc.

So far in our discussions TSI has done most of the talking. What we would really like now is to learn what you and the other people in Federated’s management need to get out of the system. A goal-oriented approach works best for us. We have moved mountains for other clients, and we would definitely appreciate the opportunity to tell you how we would attack your biggest problems. We have never shrunk from such a challenge in the past. Our track record in this regard is essentially flawless. If someone will tell us what they need, we will provide it.

Do you think that we could schedule a face-to-face meeting with you and whoever else is involved in this project about this challenge? We have always been straight-shooters, and we would be eager to listen to whatever you have to say.

My last two encounters with Macy’s were both about insertion orders for newspaper advertising. TSI had developed and successfully marketed an Internet-based system for insertion orders to newspapers. Macy’s West, Macy’s South, and most of the May Company divisions that FDS acquired in the merger used it, and they all loved it. We called it AxN, which was pronounced “A cross N”.

I knew that, compared to our other AdDept clients, Macy’s East used a small fraction of the programs that comprised AdDept. Still, they were entering the ads, and, therefore, they were a good candidate to use AxN. I wrote to the Media Director, whom I had never met, and requested a meeting about AxN. He seemed very interested. We scheduled a meeting, I made a dozen or so copies of our sales materials for AxN, I packed them in my briefcase, and I boarded the 6:30 train again. I was alone because TSI had no marketing/sales person at the time.

The meeting was not what I expected. It was conducted by a man named Roman from the IT area, not the advertising department. My presentation was very well received. Roman said that it was very impressive.

He pressed me on whether TSI planned to provide a way to send the layouts for ads over the Internet. This surprised me. I thought that this was a problem that had been addressed years earlier. The market leader was the Associated Press’s AdSend service, but I also knew of several competitors. I said that TSI had no plans to enter that market. I explained that we had neither the infrastructure nor the expertise necessary to compete in that arena. Besides, none of our clients had asked for it, and they were not shy about requesting our services.

He said that we should consider it. Macy’s was looking for someone who could enable them to use the Internet for both insertion orders and the delivery of ads, “because, you know, one-stop shopping is better.”

What should I have said?

I had three hours on the train to mull this over. I had made a mistake by letting this remark go unchallenged. It seemed like such a silly thing to say. I thought that they would want expertise and experience, not fewer phone numbers.

If one-stop shopping really was the objective, then I had no chance of ever persuading them to use AxN. Therefore, nothing could be lost by asking for proof of any real value associated with having one vendor doing both tasks. I knew very well that the people who placed orders for newspaper ads were completely separate from the employees who created the actual layouts and sent them to the papers. This was true at Macy’s in New York and at every other large retailer that I had met with.

We never heard from them after that.

I learned later that Macy’s East’s advertising department had never used AdDept for insertion orders, even though they could have easily faxed the orders from the AS/400. Instead, each coordinator had developed ways to communicate with the reps at the paper. It sounded chaotic.

My last frustrating encounter with FDS (by then known as Macy’s Inc.) occurred in, I think, 2007. This one revolved around Dave Ostendorf, whom I had known quite well when he had been the liaison between TSI and the advertising department at Famous Barr, the May Company division based in St. Louis. Much more about my relationship with Dave and the installation at Famous Barr is posted here.

This is the only picture I could find of Dave Ostendorf. He is on the far left side of the table in the white shirt.

Dave called me about the use of AxN. He said that the people for whom he worked in Macy’s Corporate Advertising department asked him to find out how much we would charge for an interface between AxN and the system that had been developed internally. Dave was a very straight arrow. I trusted him (unlike everyone else mentioned in this entry) implicitly.

Of course, I asked for more details, but Dave would not provide them. He was rather sheepish about this. He advised me just to write up a proposal in our usual format with as many disclaimers as I wanted to include. He also specifically warned me not to low-ball it. So, I wrote up a quote for $20,000 that may have set a world’s record for use of phrases like “assuming that”.

A short time after I talked with him Dave resigned his job at Macy’s and moved back to his home town of Indianapolis. Needless to say, no one ever called about the quote. I have always suspected that it had been used as a justification for further investment in the corporate system.

So, my interactions with FDS and its successor Macy’s Inc. were completely fruitless. If FDS/Macy’s Inc. was the Brass Ring of our field of software, it was in sight quite a few times, but we were never able to snatch it.

My only real regret is that I do not completely understand why we continually failed. Our success with every other department store chain was close to universal, and the employees in the advertising departments at FDS and Macy’s divisions seemed enthusiastic about what TSI had to offer. However, in these situations we were up against an amorphous alternative, the system developed for Burdines and the Bon Marché, about which I knew very little.

One thing that struck me when rereading the letter that I had written to Robin Creen. I seemed to be asking for an opportunity to see the alternative. As a debater and a debate coach I was much better on the negative. I seemed to feel confident that if they just told me what they were using or planning to use, I could demonstrate what was wrong with it. Even if our software was lacking in some areas, I felt confident that we knew how to change AdDept to make it better.

Fortunately TSI found plenty of work outside of FDS/Macy’s up until the time that Denise and I were ready to dispose of the business. If some of these opportunities had gone the other way, it seems likely that we would have missed out on some of our other achievements.

1. Val Walser worked int the advertising department in Seattle until Macy’s brought all of her division’s administrative functions to San Francisco in 2008. Her LinkedIn page, which is here, says that she “directed development of a sophisticated, integrated software product, which was Macy’s premier marketing/advertising system managing all departmental functions.” I presume that this refers to the system once known as FedAd that was begun by Burdines.

2. Len Miller apparently still works for Macy’s in 2022. His LinkedIn page is here.

3. Robin Creen left Macy’s in 2008. Her LinkedIn page is here.

4. Dave Ostendorf’s LinkedIn page is here.

2000 TSI: AxN: System Design

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TSI as a nexus between advertisers and newspapers. Continue reading →

The term insertion order was used in advertising to describe a list of detailed information about ads that advertisers provided to newspapers or magazines so that the publication could reserve the space. The design of AxN, TSI’s clearinghouse on the Internet for insertion orders, only really congealed when I had finished reading Bob Cancilla’s outstanding book about using the AS/400 for e-business, IBM’s word for commercial transactions that used the Internet. The process of determining what TSI wanted to do and how we learned how to do it has been described here.

The Internet servers on the AS/400 in TSI’s office were used in the project. The FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server was used to receive transmissions of data files containing insertion orders generated by the AS/400’s at our client. The SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server sent computer-generated emails to both advertisers and newspapers. The HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) server allowed the posting of web pages on TSI’s website, TSI-TSI.com.

TSI’s AS/400 was connected to the Internet through a T-1 line leased from AT&T. The backup line was a cable connection to Cox. It was seldom, if ever, needed. I can recall no problems with the connection.

AdDept changes: AdDept, TSI’s administrative system for the advertising departments of large retailers, included programs for producing the original insertion orders used to schedule advertising at newspapers and for producing change orders and cancellations. The users at each installation had slightly different methods of selecting the items from the media schedule to be ordered (usually once per week for ROP and once per month for inserts) and different formats for printing or faxing the orders. However, all installations used the same programs for updating the data files with the ordering information.

Newspapers were ordinarily designated on AdDept’s pub table with two “variations”—one for ROP (“run of press”—the pages printed by the newspaper) and one for inserts (the preprinted flyers and coupons inserted with the pages printed by the newspaper). Some needed additional variations for things like the Sunday supplement or the television guide. The pub table contained a field that designated how insertion orders would be delivered. The choices—as designated by a one-character field on the pub table—were faxing or just printing. A new option was added for delivery through TSI’s website on the Internet using AxN. When a paper agreed to a trial subscription for AxN, the field was changed for each of its versions. If the paper stopped using AxN, it was set back to its previous value.

The configuration on each client’s AS/400 was modified so that the FTP server was automatically started every time the system initiated the Initial Program Load (IPL). “IPL” was IBM-speak for booting or rebooting. Most of TSI’s AdDept clients IPLed once a week.

The sections of the insertion programs that updated the data files were augmented. If the pub was using the Internet for insertion orders, new code was executed for each order as a whole and for each item on the order. This code created a file for the order and wrote records on the file for the header (AxN‘s code for the pub, range of dates, type of order, whether it was a new order, revision, or cancellation, and a few additional items), detail (individual ads), and special instructions that could be for individual ads or the whole order. As records were written, they were logged on a file.

When the user closed the insertion order program, a routine was called to use FTP to send a copy of the file to a designated library1 on TSI’s server. The original files remained on the advertiser’s system for a while until the system administrator ran the cleanup program.

FTP clients can actually do a lot more than send and receive files, but the configuration of TSI’s server prohibited most of those features.

Processing the orders: The configuration for TSI’s AS/400 was also changed so that the FTP, SMTP, and HTTP servers started during each IPL. Another program that we wrote to monitor the library containing orders also was started at IPL. In the twelve years that this process was active we had zero failures.

The monitoring program examined the contents of the library designated to receive the files. If the library was empty, the program went to sleep for a minute or two. If it found anything in the library, It copied the files to a separate library. For each file that it found it started a batch job to process the file. It then deleted the files from the receiving library and went back to sleep.

The processing programs evaluated each file to make sure that it could read all the records and that none of the fields in any contained invalid information. Since all of this information had been generated by AdDept programs run on the advertising departments’ AS/400s2, problems almost never occurred. If any anomalies were discovered, an email was sent to me, Denise Bessette, and a programmer.

After validating the data the program created database files for new orders or updated the records of existing orders. Time-stamped log entries were written for all of these operations.

After the permanent database files were updated, an email was sent to the rep at the newspaper and the coordinator at the advertising department. It simply told them that the insertion order had been posted on TSI-TSI.com and provided a link to the website.

The processing programs were written in BASIC and IBM’s Control Language (CL). The former were used to validate the received file and to update the data files. The latter were used for system-oriented tasks such as sending emails and copying files.

I don’t remember the details of how it worked, but I think that there was also a program that monitored the number of FTP transactions in a period of time. Two of three times the system was the target of half-hearted attacks on the FTP server. We were easily able to repel them.

Setup for the interactive programs: The reps at the newspapers and the coordinators at the advertisers were expected to be able to access TSI’s AS/400 through the Internet using a browser. Therefore, it was necessary to change the system’s configuration on our AS/400 so that the HTTP3 server for the website was always started as part of the IPL. At the same time a second local HTTP server for development and testing by TSI programmers (primarily me) was also configured.

Not tsetse, TSI-TSI.com.

Security was provided by the AS/400’s HTTP server. The scripts for all AxN pages on TSI’s website (TSI-TSI.com) were placed in a library that was password-protected. The pages that described the company and its products and services were open to the public. Static pages were written in HTML, the language of the web. The scripts for interactive pages were written in Net.Data, the only scripting language that IBM supported on the AS/400 at the time.

The AS/400 had the ability to set up interactive sessions for users who logged in to the HTTP server. If we had implemented this feature, the system could have timed-out users who had entered their credentials and left the connection open. Implementing this would have complicated the development enormously. We decided not to do it until it became necessary. Like all other developers in that era, we were in a hurry to launch the product on the Internet. Since we never encountered any security issues, we never did.

I take it back. Actually there was one security issue. The reps and coordinators tended to store their credentials in their browsers so that they would be filled in automatically on the security screen. When there was turnover, or someone got a new computer or software update, the passwords and user ID’s were sometimes lost. The support people at TSI did not have the capability of retrieving passwords, but they could assign new ones. After each new one was assigned, it was given over the phone to the user. To insure that this solved the problem, the TSI employee stayed on the line while the user signed on. The user was then advised to change the password and, if necessary, talked through that process.

I am sure that both the newspapers and advertisers were happy that we did not automate this process. We only needed to deal with it a handful of times per month. If we had succeeded at convincing more advertisers to use AxN, we might have needed to automate it.

The interactive programs for newspapers: In the course of research for this entry I discovered the pdf file for the very comprehensive AxN: Handbook for Newspaper Users and posted it here. I had created this twenty-two-page document using PageMaker software in the early 2000’s before we had the first live implementation of the product/service.

The handbook included samples of all the screens and reports. This document was sent to every newspaper when it agreed to participate in the trial period. We provided no training, but no one had much trouble learning to use the system. I must say that I think that I did a superb job. TSI received amazingly few support calls.

The document is more or less self-explanatory. There are just a few things that are worth noting.

The AxN programs used “frames”4. Every interactive screen had three sections that consistently take up the same amount of space on the screen. The “Display” section was always the top area with the light blue background. The “Buttons” area was at the bottom and had a steel blue background. The third frame was “Empty”; that is, it had no space on the screen reserved for it. For each page there was a master script that loads the scripts for the three frames.

When a user clicked on a button, the empty frame was loaded with the appropriate script and executed. So, for example, if the “Confirm” button was clicked on after an order had been selected, the script in the empty frame would check to see if anything was in the “Confirmed by” box. If not it would highlight that field and display an error message without reloading the page. If the field contained characters, the script called a sequence of CL and BASIC programs to mark the order as confirmed and send an email to the coordinator at the advertiser.

The buttons available varied by page. However the Buttons section always contained a Home button (the one that looks like a house) and a Help button (question mark). The former returned the user to the site’s home page. The latter produced a page that explained all of the fields and buttons on the original page.

The interactive programs for advertisers: I also found the pdf file for the twenty-eight page AxN: Handbook for AdDept Users: It explained how to use both the AdDept programs to send new orders, changes, and cancellations and the AxN web pages to make sure that all newspaper reps have confirmed the orders. I posted the handbook here.

Advertisers who made changes to the schedule after an order was sent were expected to make the changes in AdDept and to send revision orders.

Daily tasks: Every morning a program searched for unconfirmed orders. Lists were prepared for both newspapers and advertisers. Each newspaper rep and advertising coordinator was emailed a list of the orders that pertained to them. A master list was also printed at TSI. An employee made a “courtesy” telephone call to warn reps each newspaper with unconfirmed orders that they were within a few days of publication.

Billing: In theory both the advertisers and the newspapers were billed for the use of the AxN service. In almost all cases the advertisers had been using the AS/400 to fax orders to the papers. They had been paying TSI a monthly fee to maintain this software. When they started using AxN we charged the same amount for support and dropped the faxing charge. So, there was a net-zero effect for the advertisers.

TSI’s computer programs required changes to accommodate the newspapers as clients. The main change was to convert the three-digit5 client number field from numeric to character. The existing clients maintained their numbers, but the newspaper clients were assigned alphabetical designations sorted by state.

A separate billing program was written to create invoices for the newspapers. Most were billed quarterly; a few preferred to be billed monthly.

AxN was extremely reliable and was very popular with both newspapers and advertisers. Support calls were rare. I vaguely recollect one instance in which a newspaper failed to run an ad or ran it incorrectly. I was able to document exactly what the system had done with timestamps, and neither side thought that AxN had contributed to the problem.

I definitely wrote all of the Net.Data scripts. Someone else at TSI may have written a few of the BASIC and CL programs used for AxN, but I did the bulk of that coding as well.

1. A “library” in the AS/400’s “native environment” was roughly equivalent to a “folder” or “directory” on a PC. However, libraries on the AS/400 could not be nested. That is, there was no such thing as a sub-library. More details about the AS/400’s design principles can be read here. The AS/400 also supported being used as a server for some other operating systems, but TSI did not use that feature.

2. The header record for the order contained a field that identified the format used for the files. Since no one except AdDept users was ever convinced to use AxN, no code for processing orders in a different format was ever written.

3. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP servers were able to serve pages to a browser using the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and a few other formats.

4. I really liked the use of frames, but for some reason it was disparaged by supposedly sophisticated developers, and eventually frames were no longer supported by browsers. Instead a complicated use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) was necessary to produce a similar effect. AxN was still using frames when TSI closed in 2014. I have never been able to duplicate the effect of the empty frame with CSS.

5. The worst design mistake that I ever made was using a three-digit number for clients. None of our agency clients ever needed a larger field, and the client file on TSI’s system still had many unused client numbers when we began marketing AxN. I decided that it would require less effort to change the type of the client number field from numbers to characters than to expand the size of the field.