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Pratibha Kale was a Customer Service Manager for shipping company APL Limited. She supervised eight Customer Service Representatives at APL’s Western District Office in Mumbai, India. Pratibha and her staff worked with APL’s customers to help them calculate how much it would cost and how long it would take to ship cargo to other places. They also worked with people and businesses in Mumbai who had received shipments from other countries: Pratibha and her staff made sure those customers came in to claim their cargo and fill out the paperwork that was required. And she and her staff helped customers who wanted to track down cargo that might currently be almost anywhere in the world.

Pratibha had worked in the shipping business in India for 20 years. During that time, she had seen dramatic changes. When she began working in 1980, for instance, computers were not yet used in her office. Pratibha would use “carbon paper” and a typewriter to make eight to ten copies of the financial and customs documents each shipment of cargo needed. Then, because she had neither e-mail nor a fax machine, she would have to send that paperwork with a messenger to the place the shipment was going. Keeping track of paperwork and getting it where it needed to be was a real hassle!

As she used all this paperwork to make payments to the customs house brokers who arranged to ship cargo with APL, Pratibha became eager for tools that would help her work more efficiently. So, it was not surprising that in 1984, she volunteered to computerize the brokerage payment process — even though she knew almost nothing about computers! She had to learn quickly. she and her team studied each step in the process to figure out what the computer program would need to do, and the system they created was a success.

Today, Pratibha had been given another challenge. And once again, she realized she had a lot to learn.