"It's unfair," says Tony Flintoff, the IT Systems Support Manager at RAC, the UK motoring organisation with over six million members.

"Every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, people are relying not only on our breakdown service but on the whole range of our other services as well."

"But we've never once in the eight years I've been working with Hopewiser been able to test their breakdown service. Because there hasn't been any breakdowns. And judging by everything they've done for us to date, there won't be."

That doesn't, however, stop him from dreaming.

"I can see them roaring up," he says, "in their orange vans, lights flashing. Screeching to a standstill. Jump leads at the ready to re-start the system. But it will probably never happen."

Hopewiser first started working with RAC ten years ago.

The oldest motoring organisation in the UK - It was founded in 1897 as virtually a motoring club for gentlemen - it was on the brink of it's current dramatic expansion drive, which has boosted membership by practically 50 per cent.

"At the time we had about four million members. We had different computers. We had about 12 to 15 different computer systems and everyone had their own different address management procedures," says Tony Flintoff.

The decision was taken to centralise and standardise.

Today, as a result, RAC has one of the biggest IBM mainframe computers on the market, an OS/390, which is based at Bradley Stoke, Bristol.

For security, everything is also stored on an Oracle database at two secure sites.

Their entire address file, which is now one of the largest in the country, has been cleaned up and standardised with the aid of Hopewiser software.

"It's the best it's been since the man put down his red flag," says Tony Flintoff.

But, of course, it's a continuing process.

"Members change their address. Other information changes. We have to keep their records up-to-date," says Tony Flintoff.

"Districts are renamed. Postcodes change. This all has to be fed in."

"Then there are new members, new agreements. We must be using Hopewiser software thousands of times every day."

Most important of all, however, is the breakdown service RAC provides its members.

"Nearly every call that comes in is checked against Hopewiser software," he continues.

"We have more than 500 people on the phone in three major call centres in Bristol, Manchester and the Midlands. We have other centres in London and Glasgow."

"Every day we take 40,000 calls, in a year, over two million, from people who have had a breakdown, enquire about their existing membership or take out a new membership."

"Every one is asked for their membership number or their Postcode. This enables us to confirm the call and validate the information. Once validated, 83 per cent of all callers have an RAC patrol on the spot in an average time of just 40 minutes."

"Sometimes we have real emergencies. The Hopewiser software, of course, also helps us speed up our response."

But in spite of the volume of work involved, Hopewiser software has coped admirably!

"They make the whole process so straightforward that we don't have to think about it," says Tony Flintoff.

"It's very easy to install. It's easy to operate. It's very user friendly. You need very little time to introduce it. It's transparent to the user. There's no need for any long training periods."

"On top of all that it's extremely easy and efficient to maintain, with regular updates on tapes and CD's. We just implement the update and we are on our way."