It is no longer necessary to be a giant business with a large IT budget, to benefit from integrated end-to-end systems. The arrival of Microsoft as a major player in this market brings powerful large system facilities within the price bracket of small to medium organisations. Companies need a system that delivers what they require today, but has the ability to adapt immediately and efficiently to the changing business environment.
David Hurley, managing director of Anglia Business Computers, took a strategic decision seven years ago to back his belief that PCs would dominate all sectors of industry for the foreseeable future. Since transforming his company into a PC-based software and services organisation, he has seen reality match his vision. “We were very happy with the Microsoft integration and front office platform,” he says, “but our chosen business management system, the Tetra CS/3 system had run out of steam. We carefully researched the worldwide market for a suitable business oriented solution for the small and medium sized business sector. We chose Navision as it was written in the 1990s specifically for the Windows environment.
“The system incorporated superb technology concepts and powerful functionality that made ideally suited to the mid-range supply chain marketplace. Moreover, we could rapidly configure it to meet 100 per cent of client needs while deploying quite complex solutions within three to four months. It was also very quick and easy to amend it to reflect changes in the customers business. We also hired high quality business-oriented consultants with in-depth knowledge of business processes. The results achieved on our clients’ behalf were superb as many of them were able to show significant returns on investment within three to six months of going live. Our decision to select Navision was endorsed in 2002 when Microsoft acquired Navision as part of its strategy to enter the business management marketplace. We now have a total, single-source solution backed by the world’s largest software company”
Apart from the in-depth Navision and platform integration expertise, the company has made a significant investment in a new technology that sets it apart from the crowd. At the core of all Microsoft technology is a new concept called .NET. Microsoft .NET is software that has cost £billions to develop which connects people, information and devises through web services. A web service is a discreet piece of software code that inter-operates across applications and operating systems.
Hurley explains: “We quickly realised that .NET could help our customers to leverage the power of their internal information systems for competitive purposes. During 2003, we developed a range of .NET based applications that seamlessly linked to the Navision platform. This meant that we could quickly and cost-effectively implement e-commerce facilities. We could also rapidly deploy mobile solutions that allowed the dynamic capture of scanned items and signature details as well as allowing a mobile workforce access to up to date information”.
One of the biggest markets in East Anglia is fresh produce, second only in fact to high technology, which created an obvious close-to-home target for Anglia. It was also a market that had yet to grasp hold of the technological possibilities available to it.
This should change now, says Anglia’s fresh produce - business development manager Bob Rose. He has previous experience in the fresh produce market with Weir Systems, and says what he has seen at Anglia “has knocked me sideways. There is a huge opportunity to plug the knowledge gap in this marketplace, which has enticed me back into fresh produce. This will be a very exciting time.
“The fresh produce industry works on very tight timescales, prices are being driven down and logistics efficiency is becoming more important by the year. IT has historically been a recorder in all of these processes - now it is a facilitator,” says Rose. “Supermarkets and major customers will become more demanding, not less. They will drive the demand for rapid information flow and quality based systems. It is now becoming possible to satisfying the system demands at mid-range prices and far more quickly. A three to four month timescale is typical for implementation of our systems and we expect customers to get the money back on their investment within six months of live running. With that scenario, the business proposition becomes extremely attractive”.
It is an oft-stated fact that 40 per cent of software companies in the UK will not exist in four years. That not only rings alarm bells for the providers of systems, but also for the users of the systems. Producers and suppliers are increasingly dependent on IT for survival and they do not want to be stuck with a system supplied by a company that has gone out of business. MBS, it can be assumed, is on fairly solid ground, and has set itself an ambitious target of 50 per cent market share of the UK’s SME business management market in five years. Windows has a 90 per cent plus market share, so a Microsoft based business management solution must have a decent chance of success. Its MBS Navision product is fully supported until at least 2013, providing the stability and continuity that companies making major investments need.
The joint capabilities of Anglia and MBS are reflected in Linkfresh FP3, a package that allows everyone in the supply chain to look at the same picture at all stages. “The supplier should be telling the supermarket buyer what is happening to the product, not the depot manager or produce manager in store,” says Rose.
“This solution closes all the loops and creates a scenario whereby the supplier has total control over the monitoring process right through to the supermarket depot. Anglia has the MBS Navision expertise, infrastructure skills and the .NET applications that provide customers with the one-stop-shop. The marketplace is ready and we are already embarking on the first couple of projects. We did not want to make too much noise until we had tested the concepts in real life customer environments. This has now been done and the reaction to Microsoft entering the fresh produce market with this powerful technology has been tremendous. We are going to be very busy.”
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