IRIS: Head in the Cloud, but feet on the ground

While Sage has tied itself in knots coming trying to develop offerings for the fast-growing web-based software without jeopardising the user base and profitability of its desktop accounting cash cows, IRIS took a much more straightforward approach by acquiring the Brighton-based Cloud developer PROJECTminder last year. AccountingWEB recently met IRIS Group marketing director David Pinches and the PROJECTminder team to find out how the acquisition was progressing within IRIS, and what impact it was likely to have on the company’s wider online applications strategy. According to Pinches, IRIS is still “at the research stage” of Cloud Computing. Group CEO Martin Leuw and his board have asked the different IRIS business units to build the Cloud into their three-year planning assumptions, but are letting them take an organic approach that responds to pace of each individual market sector. “We’re starting to see interest [in the Cloud] at various levels and in different markets such as legal outsourcing,” said Pinches. “But we also know that most people are clinging on to their current software investment for another year.” Initially the group considered establishing PROECTminder’s Brighton HQ as a centre of excellence for Cloud applications, but Pinches explained that web application development was taking place at other sites within the group. “Other IRIS products have their own roadmaps and will continue to pursue them. At this point, it’s more about knowledge sharing and getting learning from PROJECTminder into those projects.” The IRIS business model is increasingly focused on vertical markets such as accountancy, law, not for profit and medical practices. “Our intellectual property is knowledge of these sectors, not generic applications,” Pinches explained. “If we go to existing customers and say we’ve got a great project management/billing solution, they’ll say, ‘So what?’ If you show how it feeds into existing practice or charity finance systems to eliminate cost - that’s different. That’s when you start to get take up.” To build towards that kind of catalytic reaction, the IRIS divisions are undertaking in “classic product management research” in their markets and look for migration opportunities using PROJECTminder’s existing data import/export facilities. The web-based PROJECTminder application grew out of the building industry. Initially starting life as a time and billing tool for architectural practices, the application spread through other construction disciplines such as engineering and surveying. With IRIS’s backing, PROJECTminder was looking to expand into other project-focused sectors such as business consultancy and professional services including law and accountancy, explained PROJECTminder director Steve Penfold. The application itself is impressive, with six main modules and additional features such as a holiday planner and an “accountslink” facility that can code and output the project cost data to different nominal ledger systems. At the heart of the program is the time & fees module. As data is entered, it can then show real-time figures on expenditures and commitments and the invoicing system will generate bills from the same data. In addition to its Gantt charting and resourcing modules, where people can be assigned to projects and tasks on a visual chart, PROJECTminder also has its own forecasting module. One feature attracting interest from other IRIS development teams is an online dashboard facility that lets users create web-based “graphlets” from data held on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 systems. “Even though the database is somewhere else, they can still use the drag and drop Report Builder online,” explained Penfold.

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