Successful company has Chch link

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 33

Successful company has Chch link

Waimairi District Council has become the latest Christchurch organisation to become a user of the Command software package. The council joins a number of other Command users in the South Island, including Atlas Appliances, Donaghy’s Industries, Baigents Timber, Christchurch Drainage Board, Hertz Rent-A-Car, United Building Society and Brandt Electronics. These organisations are customers of Datacom Equipment, Ltd’s computer service bureau operation, or have had computer systems installed for them by Datacom Equipment. The Command package was developed by a com?any started by Anne and om McKaskill, a couple with strong Christchurch connections. The McKaskills’ software company has produced one of the world’s most successful packages for manufacturing and distribution companies. The brainchild did not have a difficult birth. “We developed the specifications in one meeting, one Saturday around our boardroom,” says Anne. But the gestation period for Command could be considered to be seven years, starting in 1974 when Anne and Tom left Christchurch, heading for academic careers in England. Anne and Tom are directors of Pioneer Computer Systems U.K., Ltd, and Command is the company’s manufacturing and distribution control package. Command is becoming well known in New Zealand, with over 30 users signed up since it was introduced by Datacom Equipment in 1982. When the couple left Christchurch, Tom after a period lecturing in accountancy at the University of Canterbury and Anne having newly completed a degree in accountancy, they both joined the London Business School and "intended to become academics.” Anne started a Ph.D., but soon got diverted into consulting on company takeovers and small-business management. This led into computer consulting, and a desire to get involved in hen own company. Tom, meanwhile, had completed his Ph.D. and had joined ICL as a troubleshooter in the company’s internal management con-

suiting group. He shifted into ICL’s software consulting division to get experience in a software house. By then the couple had plans for their own company. After six months taken to decide what they wanted to do, Anne and Tom “wrote an almighty business plan in good business-school style.” The bank manager was very impressed. The couple sold their house, and with the £20,000 realised, started Pioneer Computer Systems. With Tom still working for ICL, Anne installed a DEC PDP--11/03 minicomputer in their dining room and proceeded to learn how to programme. The McKaskills saw a gap between the business world and the computer world. They had four years experience behind them in the functional aspects of the business world, had an ability to manage staff and had good technical skills. “We saw in the U.K. a need to put the business and computer skills together,” says Tom. Pioneer Computer Systems turned out quite differently from what was originally planned. "Originally the concept was that we would sell a lot of small systems,” explains Anne. “We thought the road was paved with gold, but in fact it was paved with aggravation.” They soon realised that their expertise was in larger-size systems. The PDP-11/03 was in the dining room of the house for six months. Anne had been joined full-time by Tom and the third director of the company, Graham Menzies. “We were veiy lucky,” says Tom, explaining how the company got off to a flying start. “Very early on we sold a small computer to a subsidiary of British Airways.” They wrote a management accounting system for small-plane movements and costs. “Thereafter we gathered up customers as we moved along,” says Tom. The objective of the company was to get into integrated manufacturing and accounting systems. Not interested in re-inventing the wheel, they acquired the rights to an American package that ran on Basic Four computers. “Twenty-four systems later we started to realise the package’s limitations,” says Tom. It was not based on a data base system and was written for single-ware-

house and single-company operations. Additionally, in common with other American accounting systems, there was not as much emphasis on controls as in the United Kingdom. Pioneer had become the largest Basic Four software house in the United Kingdom, before Basic Four brought out its own product and Pioneer moved away from the supplier. As well as the Basic Four systems, Pioneer sold a dozen PDP-11/03 systems, with a reputation for having the best retail jewellers’ system in the United Kingdom. In two years the company had grown to a staff of 16 and its teams of two programmers and two installers were putting in a system a month each. A brief fling with the microcomputer industry was not so successful. “With microcomputers the marketing effort is just as high, the cost to sell them is just as high, and the customers’ expectation is higher,” says Tom. “Business software for microcomputers is generally appalling,” he says. “We didn’t have the sources and at the end of the day you don’t make enough money to offer a competent service. “We have an ethical problem — we attempt to give good value for money.” The microcomputer buyers generally were not knowledgeable and needed a lot of accounting advice. Also, when problems occurred, such as machine problems, Pioneer had to send someone to go and sort it out. The McKaskills blame microcomputer manufacturers for many of the problems. "Advertising gives a completely false impression,” says Anne. “They say that a £ 900 micro will run your business. Small businessmen had a completely false idea of what they were doing and how much they had to pay for it.” “When you tell a prospect that they will have to pay £l7OO for a stock control system,” she says, “they tell you that they know a school teacher who will write it for £75.” After Pioneer’s experience, Tom believes that the only companies that can make money in the microcomputer business are highvolume retail shops (“don’t come back and ask any questions”), the microcomputer manufacturers, and the one- or two-man software houses working long hours with lots of dedication. Over-riding their day-to-

day work in those times was the idea that the company wanted to put its expertise into a standard product. Anne and Tom note that the large software houses in the United Kingdom did not have the expertise, programming skills and standards of the Pioneer team. So they sat down on Saturday and designed Command. “We had some idea of what we wanted and what would be some of the problems,” says Anne. “We had the experience of installing a vast range of integrated systems.” They started with a clean piece of paper and said, “This is what we want to do.” It included a multi-ware-house, multi-company, multi-factory structure, with good internal controls and an aim to have ease of integration. On that Saturday, they

mapped out the file structure and defined the link points between modules. “We have what you would call, an open-ended architecture,” says Tom. “We can link in other modules, and are now in the process of bolting on all sort of goodies on the side.” Despite their quick start, the Pioneer team put a big effort into proving the system. “We had a team of people who knew what was wanted,” says Anne. At the height of the development there were six people in the development team. They worked hard in making it practical for modules to stand alone, a feature that has proved extremely useful in New Zealand where Datacom Equipment has applied Command to many different applications, not just in manufacturing and distribution. From Pioneer’s earlier

experiences, the team decided to. invest heavily in an effective restart capability, so that support costs were reduced. Pioneer chose User-11 as its development tool (User--11 is an applications development tool for PDP-11 and VAX computers). “Basically we were looking around for a vehicle to develop our own product,” says Anne. There was input from New Zealand during their search, where Datacom Equipment was using User--11 (Anne is the daughter of Dr Bernard Battersby of Christchurch, chief executive of Datacom). “User-11 seemed to be the best,” she says. “We realised

the benefits of standardising everything and having a very fast production tool.” Starting in 1981, it took nearly two years to produce the first full version of Command. The first module, a bill of materials module, was out in 15 months. The company received a grant from the British Government under a software support scheme of £lB,OOO — which was meant to be about a quarter of the cost of the development. But Command cost £ 300,000 to develop, and the company had to start selling the product before it was ready. There was an early sale to GEC, worth £250,000 (including hardware), but Anne and Tom consider their most significant early sale was to a company that makes baby buggies close to their office. It was the first full system, was quite a large system, and was very successful. Now Pioneer is selling one system per week in the United Kingdom. The company has dealers in the Middle East, Canada, the United States and Australia. Earlier this year, on a visit to Christchurch, they took the opportunity to talk with other companies on their round-the-world trip with a view to expanding their dealer network. At the same time Pioneer staff in England were busy converting Command to the DEC VAX range of computers. The company will shortly release a major enhancement to the product which will include lot or batch tracking, or traceability (where a product can be traced back in the distribution and manufacturing process through a batch num-, ber). This helps satisfy Government regulations in the food, drink, pharmaceutical and seed industries and opens up a market where Pioneer will be almost the sole supplier. From a company that had revenues of £3OO in its first year, Pioneer has grown to a company employing 24 people with a revenue of £645,000. It is looking at selling more than 100 copies of Command this year and believes it is competing with only three or four other packages worldwide. “They are at the end of their life,” says Anne, “and we are at the beginning of ours.” .