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Review: Mamut One

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27th Oct 2009
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After more than two years on the drawing board, Mamut One emerged this autumn as the flagship “software plus services” platform linking the Mamut Business Enterprise application family to a range of web-hosted services.

In a way, Mamut One is more of a software concept than a mere business application, but how does it work in real life? This article presents findings from background briefings and more than 90mins in front of Mamut One with its UK product manager Jonathan Read.

The concept and interface
At the heart of Mamut One remains is the on-premise Mamut 12 Enterprise software suite, containing accounting, HR, payroll, CRM, project management, logistics/stock, ecommerce, reporting & analysis modules. The modules share a common interface and database structure, so queries, filters and customisation tweaks all work in a consistent manner.

Lurking in the background is the web-based Mamut Desktop and a collection of other services that plug into the core ERP modules: website design and hosting (including an integrated webstore), online back-up, virtual meeting and collaboration tools, and the Validis data checker. The web Desktop presents many of the core functions within a browser and makes it possible to make enquries and alter records remotely - even with a browser-equipped mobile phone.

While my exploration encountered a couple of isolated instances where cracks had been lightly papered over, the overall Mamut One experience is seamless and easy to use.

In normal Windows mode, the program opens with a configurable Desktop view, with specific modules listed down the left hand side of the screen, a data area mid-screen and a smattering of command icons along the top. Clicking the first of these, New, presents a list of options drawn from separate modules including Contacts, Sales, Quotations, Purchases and communications. Similar options are available from the Reports pull down menu.

Mamut One user desktop

Clicking into a particular module brings up the now traditional “flowchart” view of the activities you can carry out - journals, orders, ledgers and period end processes in the case of the Accounting module, or similar CRM or project-related tasks in the relevant modules.

Mamut One Financials flowchart 

Like any self-respecting modern application Mamut lets you drill around the application from items in any list, in any direction. So if you are looking for a particular order, you can query the customer list and filter through their orders, or you could pick up a particular product from the Warehouse module and track it from when you bought it to the point where it becomes part of a specific order.

The integrated approach
The quality of Mamut’s integration shows up well in the Contact Management section. The main customer record screen includes a series of secondary tabs showing different aspects of your interaction with customer - including emails and documents that you may have sent or received from them, orders made/taken and projects they are involved with.

Mamut One Contact Management 

“You can work from the Contact Management screen alone and look at almost any other area of the application by clicking the relevant tab and then go straight through to that module,” explained Read.

What makes this module particularly attractive is that it can link either with the simple email client within Mamut Enterprise or Microsoft Outlook. The administrator can set the desired level of integration, but with Outlook set to synchronise any emails that match addresses held in the Mamut database, the messages and attachments will automatically come through to the Contact Management Activities and Documents tabs.

A separate Contact Status option lists key information about the person including outstanding bills due, their payment characteristics and profitability to you as well as any work in progress on their behalf.

Mamut One Contact Status 

Filtering and reporting
The Filter icon is prominent within each of the functional modules of Mamut and comes into play when you want to query the database. Clicking the icon calls up a menu that gives you access to table within the database. Going into the Advanced tab on this screen invokes a Criteria Wizard that allows you to create any number of compound Boolean queries.

Mamut has tried to anticipate most customer needs with an extensive menu of readymade reports, but the Filtering tool lets users make their own refinements. At one point, I asked to add a probability filter that would pick up quotations that were more than 50% likely to close. Within less than a minute, this feature was created and working - and presented an on-screen list that I could export to Excel with a single right-click mouse menu command.

“Margin analysis is more important to the business owner,” noted Mamut UK manager Bryan Richter. Spotting this need - and the relative difficulties many users have getting such data out of many well known accounting applications - Mamut One lets you build up your price and margin model within the Product Register and will display the results in a real time Gross profit/margin per product report. The price configuration tool offers all sorts of options and will let you set a target price (with or without any surcharges) and then show you the margin it will make. You can create a price model and set it to come into effect at a future date. In another nice touch, many of the Product configuration options can be determined by answering a set of simple questions (Do you sell products online? Are your products liable to an environmental tax?).

All of this can be done without tinkering with different product codes in the chart of accounts, and you can use the Filter to go in and look at characteristics for different customers or products.

Software plus services
Like its corporate ally Microsoft, Mamut is trying to keep a foot in the old camp of on-premise software and a foot on the new wave of Cloud software. The “software plus services” formula smacks of having your cake and eating it, but Mamut One comes closest to achieving that balance.

Within the ecommerce module, the Edit Website option takes you into an online templating tool that lets you populate your page with pictures, text and product data drawn from the Mamut database. Putting a Contact Us form on one of the website pages will let you automatically import any data collected into the Contact Management module.

Mamut One Ecommerce flowchart 

Elsewhere, the most sophisticated “plus” service for Mamut One is the data checking facility provided by Validis. The data auditing program is set up with a series of reconciliation checks and business rules to alert you to discrepancies in the accounts data. While it can be run remotely on your data from the Online Mamut Desktop, you’ll need to go back into the Windows client edition if you want to carry out any major accounting adjustments.

In recent months, HMRC’s insistence on companies and agents using inline XBRL to file Corporation Tax returns online has caused consternation among accountants and their software developers. Mamut, however, has been courting Forbes Computer as a Mamut One partner. Before long, Mamut users will be able to export accounts data checked with Validis to Forbes and get back an iXBRL-tagged file ready for online submission. Being able to respond so quickly to such an important gap in the market is a powerful demonstration of the potential of the “software plus services” approach.

Conclusion
Many of the features demonstrated in Mamut One can be found in other business suites - but ones that usually cost a lot more. Starting from £289 + £29 per user per month for the SME edition and £690 for + £42 per user/month for the Enterprise edition, Mamut One fulfils its promise to deliver “a lot of software for very little money”.

As well as the online services and core CRM, financials, stock and timesheet (if you need them) functions, Mamut One also handles payroll and basic HR functions. But as you add extra functionality, the costs mount. A rough calculation of the first year costs for a 10-user Mamut Enterprise system (half finance, half sales) was around £13,000 with “Gold” subscription costs adding £7,000 on top of that each subsequent year. Initially it’s good value for a mid-range application, but for long-term use, a traditional licence with lower annual costs might not deliver as much, but could well cost you less.

The other great challenge for such a fully featured and wide ranging application is to stay usable in the face of all the flexibility. Mamut has found a happy middle ground - there’s a lot available to you behind the scenes, but it is coherently organised for both occasional users and the system administrator. After a detailed look, it's easy to see why Mamut has picked up so many software awards in recent years. Now it needs to convert those plaudits into concrete sales to make "software plus services" something more than a slick marketing slogan.

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By User deleted
01st Nov 2009 00:36

Mamut ONE

Great to see a well priced software option available to businesses, especially in current economic times. Well done to Mamut and their team!

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By adiaz73888
05th Nov 2009 16:08

Very interesting

Many thanks for the review.  I wonder if you or someone else can answer the following:  How does the bookkeeping function compare with VT Transaction +?

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