Platinum is awarded gold star by network specialist Vanco
Vanco Euronet, which runs wide-area computer networks for corporate clients, has pushed its newly installed Platinum accounting software system to the limit with a pan-European #150,000 client/server implementation.
Eight-year-old Vanco previously relied on Pegasus accounting software at its UK headquarters in Isleworth and outsourced accounting and financial control tasks to the local Deloitte & Touche offices in the countries in which it operates.
‘It was quite an expensive solution,’ said Vanco’s financial director Simon Hargreaves.
The search for a replacement accounts system began last year. Vanco considered offerings from Tetra and Systems Union alongside Platinum, said Hargreaves.
‘Tetra was more expensive, although cost was not our main criterion,’ he explained. ‘Tetra wasn’t Windows-based and it wouldn’t run across wide-area networks.
‘We’re in that business and did our own tests. We would have needed to lease lines at a cost of #30,000 a year to support it.’
Systems Union gave up. ‘The installation was too difficult. They wouldn’t submit a price,’ said Hargreaves. Platinum won the contract because its software ‘is a Microsoft-approved, true client/server solution that will run on a 9600bps (bits per second) line – basically a telephone line’.
Hargreaves added: ‘Platinum understood the development work needed.
They were very keen to sign us as it gave them an opportunity to have a good reference site in a growing business operating across five countries.’
Vanco placed its order through Platinum reseller Alphagen in July 1996.
The software developer had to undertake significant modification work to tailor the package in order to cope with Vanco’s large variety of recurring monthly, quarterly and annual billing arrangements.
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The networking company also has to pay different telecommunications rental costs to different suppliers.
Because it is in the network provision business, Vanco is able to ‘piggyback’ administrative traffic from its European subsidiaries down spare network bandwidth.
The #150,000 investment ‘is a big whack for a company of our size’, said Hargreaves, but the system would pay for itself within three years.
‘It will also give us better statistics and management control of working capital,’ he added. ‘And the payback will work in our favour as we add new countries.’
