Kevin Archer, Marketing Co-ordinator, Access Accounts

"Best of breed" should be thought of as more than a statement on functionality.  For an application to be considered truly best of breed a wider range of factors should be taken into account.

Many of these factors emerged last year, as secondary considerations to the question of functionality.  Consultancy, installation, training, support and upgradeability are all important.  But the most significant factors are continuing product development and integration.

Not all software authors believe in active product development.  But those who do invest in continuing R&D help to ensure that technology advances quickly.  If you try to operate a separate, generic accounts package alongside a specialised construction industry solution, the cost implications of trying to stay up to date are huge.

Running separate applications can also be a challenge for a quite different reason. Best of breed does not guarantee ease of use, and this problem is compounded when you have two or more systems, each with its own look, feel and method of working.

So what is the answer?  The most efficient solution is to choose best of breed applications that have been specifically designed to work together. This approach also happens to be the most cost-effective.

The Onyx Subcontractor's Ledger illustrates this principle.  It provides industry-specific functionality, including monitoring of job costs and full control of subcontractors, together with automatic tracking and processing of valuations and retentions.  And of course it also meets CIS requirements. But this best of breed construction industry solution also integrates seamlessly with best of breed financials software from Access Accounting.  It stays up to date by leveraging the emerging, mainstream technology released by Access, and has an almost identical user interface.

The outcome is two highly functional packaged solutions that work in harmony and have the fit of a bespoke application, but at a fraction of the price.  This makes the combined offering attractive to SMEs with turnover of between £1m and £50m."

Mark Chambers, Managing Director, Ramesys, in conversation with iTSHOWCASE News' editor

Ramesys have spent a productive last five to six years successfully consolidating their once disparate product offering to small and mid-sized construction companies, and the last eighteen months or so focussing their development resource on their offering to the larger top end construction companies. 

Mark Chambers admits that this has been a hard nut to crack. Amid all the negative press coverage of disastrous ERP installations that have dramatically stalled or alarmingly overrun on cost, Mark confirms that there still exists a desire from the "big guys" to work with systems vendors of similar size or stature.

How does he know this? Because Ramesys' own research in the market place confirmed it. Blue-chip companies feel more comfortable selecting other blue-chip companies, or at least their Financial Directors do and increasingly so do their IT Directors. Many are newly appointed to the Board or fresh from other industries, with a clear understanding, like their financial counterparts, not just of the strategic benefits of an integrated corporate finance system but also the "niche" operational requirements of the construction business, where so many recent implementations seem to have fallen foul.

Now Ramesys are no slouches when it come to size Mark reminds us.  They are a £60 million turnover business and already work with divisions of many of the UK's leading construction firms. However, with the best will in the world, they (and others like them) will never be perceived as having the required blue-chip status, the "clout" with Head Office, to partner a billion pound organisation in their multi-site, multi-national, and possibly multi-lingual enterprise-wide financial and operational system development.

Enter Oracle and the Oracle/Ramesys alliance announced just a few months ago (iTSHOWCASE News Spring issue.) It will seek to combine Oracle's database and application expertise with Ramesys' 30-year track record of developing and implementing construction-specific software. Mark believes that this will offer the ideal way forward for large organisations who will no longer have to compromise industry specific functionality to deliver an enterprise-wide solution.

Ramesys have already launched their new operational sector-specific front end solution, Summit. A product involving some twenty man years of development and built on the latest web-based technology, Summit interfaces with both their current financials product, Mentor, and Oracle ebusiness suite. It is from the now fifteen year old Mentor that Ramesys will be gradually offering migration for their existing customers to the Summit / Oracle product, as well as attracting new business straight to the Summit/Oracle package, whose first live installation is scheduled for this September. 

Mark is visibly buoyant about the Oracle deal. It has been the culmination of eighteen months hard work and, in Mark's opinion, the most exciting boost to Ramesys' business for several years. He predicts this type of alliance will not remain unique in the sector for long, but is satisfied both with the nature of their relationship with Oracle (Oracle are not precious or arrogant about Ramesys fronting the alliance to customers) and the number of large bids already on the Ramesys/Oracle table.

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