News Release
08 May 2009
Scottish Enterprise's CBS helps Infoplex growth
Thanks to help from Scottish Enterprise's commercialisation service, Fife-based firm Infoplex has successfully launched a new piece of software and experienced significant revenue growth within the last year despite these challenging times.
Infoplex counts Peter Rabbit Organics Limited, Xlent Foods Ltd and RJ Sheppy & Son, cider makers, amongst its 1300 customers, and is one of 10 Scottish businesses that participated in Scottish Enterprise's innovative Commercial Breakthrough Service (CBS) pilot programme that concluded at the end of March 2009.
The CBS Programme gave companies 12 months of expert support to improve the management of commercial risk and to further develop their sales and marketing capabilities. For Infoplex, this support was provided by Gordon Venters and Joe Henry of Planys, and focused on helping the company prepare its OrderBooks technology for a successful commercial release. OrderBooks is an innovative business solution for SMEs and was launched in October 2008.
Suitable for businesses in any sector, and the only software able to offer this level of functionality, OrderBooks merges Microsoft Outlook, CRM and TAS BOOKS into one powerful enterprise-wide information system at a fraction of the cost and complexity associated with large-scale ERP software - giving big business advantages to smaller firms.
Speaking about his experience of the CBS programme, Infoplex's Managing Director Mark Ramsay said: "Being able to participate in CBS has been incredibly beneficial for us and has given us access to marketing and sales experts that have provided us with know-how and hands-on support when we have needed it. It has been a real collaborative process and I believe that we have gained a lot of awareness about launching products and sales and marketing skills."
He continued: "In addition to the work done on OrderBooks, we have since put the knowledge and skills that we gained to good use in successfully rationalising the branding of the other software products which we produce, resulting in MultiTAS, TASflex and TASLink."
John Murray of Scottish Enterprise explained: "The idea of the Commercial Breakthrough Service is to help businesses with growth potential to improve their sales and marketing capabilities. The program is delivered over 12 months with quarterly progress reviews. We have been delighted with the early results, particularly in the current economic climate. The really encouraging thing is that the very company specific nature of the support package helps the client to acquire new skills and capabilities on the job. So, we believe that as well as delivering tangible results the Commercial Breakthrough Service helps to improve the commercial capabilities of the participating businesses enabling sustained growth. Infoplex have really embraced the CBS programme and have taken the new skills learned to heart and are continuing to implement these across the businesses. We will continue to support them to help them achieve their goals."
OrderBooks integrates with TAS BOOKS v8 and one of its key components is its dynamic visual dashboard which can be personalised and which makes it easy to monitor performance at a glance, across all areas of the business, with automatic alerts to prompt immediate action to keep things on track.
Mark Ramsay concluded: "Participating in the CBS scheme has brought greater focus to our sales and marketing effort which is having a positive effect on the business, its growth and diversity."
Infoplex is a specialist developer of software solutions for users of TAS BOOKS accounting software, with over 12 years of experience in this area, and is now branching out further with the pioneering OrderBooks technology. TAS BOOKS is the acclaimed user-friendly and highly scalable software range from Sage UK with some 85,000 installations in UK and Ireland.
