Going Global

The Netherlands enjoys an enviable reputation for quality in software application development. One of its foremost software houses, Minihouse International, has always relied on Compuware’s UNIFACE as its sole development environment for writing packaged software. Multinational companies of the caliber of Philips business communications choose Minihouse’s market-leading Sales & Marketing application, Infosale, to help them run their business globally. Other products cover finance, human resource management, project management, logistics and import/ export applications.

Now a partnership with another UNIFACE specialist, OpenPlus International, is enabling Minihouse to offer a comprehensive range of enterprise-strength business applications to challenge some of the biggest players in the packaged software market.

Minihouse has its headquarters in Groningen, the Netherlands’ second most important city for IT. Its flagship product, Infosale, is in use in 20 countries, and has been adopted by a number of multinational companies on a worldwide basis.

Minihouse started life in early 1988. It selected UNIFACE as its sole development medium from the outset, a bold choice then since UNIFACE was a new product. Chairman Hans Piëst recalls, ‘We were, in fact, the very first software house to adopt UNIFACE. And we’ve built our major application packages exclusively in that environment.’

Minihouse applications. Of the applications Minihouse has developed to date, probably the best known is Infosale. The Infosale system is designed to provide sales and marketing teams with fast access to the information they need to respond to customers’ needs and to seize opportunities while they’re hot. It promotes the personal touch customer service that puts a company on top in today’s customer-oriented marketplace.

Infosale maintains and integrates information about products and services, mailing, telemarketing, targets and all other aspects of a sales and marketing operation. It can be easily adapted to virtually any type and style of enterprise: it’s equally at home within business-to-business, consumer-oriented and non-profit organizations.

Infosale appeals to management because of its strength in MIS. Strategists and analysts can quickly define and produce the reports and graphs they need without any programming intervention. Operational staff are provided with sophisticated list management functions and automated aids to produce quotes and other standard documents. Scheduling functions and telephone scripts help office-based staff with day-to-day tasks, while those on the road can use a portable PC to sign on to a central Infosale system.

MPower, Minihouse’s human resources offering, is a state-of-the-art information system. MPower has been designed to give management the facts it needs to manage, with a minimum of data entry effort. Once again it’s been planned with optimum flexibility as an objective: the user ‘tells’ the system about the shape of the organization, and screen and report text can be defined to suit the company’s own terminology (thanks to the same UNIFACE feature that also gives Minihouse products their multi-language capability). And, once again, it’s easy to link MPower to other applications - specifically, any chosen payroll system.

Proud, Minihouse’s project management system, is an ideal way to plan and monitor. The user has maximum freedom as to the project structure, and can gain instant access to project status at any time. Actual against planned hours can be tracked in detail and there is a full range of progress reports.

Other products include Financials, providing a standard, yet easily-tailored, solution to the problem of financial management. Then there’s Unidoc, a package to automate the formalities of import/export trade to ensure the smoothest possible dealings with customs. Distribution is for helping a company keep track of stocks, purchases and sales, encouraging efficient stock management and hence promoting profitability.

Why UNIFACE? All Minihouse products are written in UNIFACE. How has Minihouse become such a committed user? Piëst explains, ‘We chose UNIFACE back in 1988. In those days it was an exclusive concept: a 4GL that offered support for client/server, and, most importantly, database-independence. Also, its ability to support mixed desktops was, and remains, very important. Most importantly however, UNIFACE’s model-driven paradigm provides applications with an ideal architecture that can easily adapt to change. This makes maintenance very easy.’

‘The supplier as a company gave us the impression it would be very cooperative and reliable. And we haven’t been disappointed. We have even become a Compuware Certified Quality Partner for UNIFACE, which expresses our good relationship with Compuware.’

Minihouse’s first big successes were with companies whose headquarters are in the Netherlands. Electronics giant Philips Business Communications is one of the biggest names, but then there’s Stork Protecon, which sells machinery worldwide. Another large customer is DSM Elastomers, a Dutch chemical manufacturer. Most Minihouse customers are in the industrial or professional services sectors.

Through sales to Dutch multinationals, Minihouse has established its presence in 20-plus countries all over the world.

International Initiative. That international initiative looks set to gain momentum. Just recently, Minihouse has forged a strong relationship with another major UNIFACE specialist, OpenPlus International. Piëst explains, ‘We’ve decided to cooperate on product development, to create applications based on the same standards and guidelines.’ These are a hybrid of Minihouse’s Univision’s standards and OpenPlus’s ADF (Application Development Framework).

The result of the cooperation between the two companies is, Piëst believes, an application set offering integrated best-of-breed product, ideal for enterprise use, across all the major functional areas: Sales and Marketing, Project Management, Human Resource, Financials and Distribution.

This cooperation is much more than just a marketing agreement. The partners are working hard to integrate their respective products together around a shared data model and a common internal and external architecture. The result will be a completely unified product set, though it will still be possible to choose just the modules that a particular organization requires. As Piëst says: ‘Together, we believe that we will offer a very strong business application across the board, for any enterprise that wants to work on a client/server basis. What we’re doing here is bringing together products from application vendors who have specialized in particular areas into a total solution. We can offer our customers an extremely high quality application in every business area that they need Ñ and one which will continue to be maintained by specialists in that area.’

The two companies complement each other from a geographic point of view. While Minihouse is strong in Europe, OpenPlus covers the USA and Asia/Pacific. ‘Between us we’re now achieving global coverage,’ Piëst says. As well as selling directly to end users, the companies are working with distributors. The marketplace’s confidence in the Minihouse/OpenPlus cooperation is demonstrated by the speed with which distributors have come forward: for example, in the UK, distributors including Minerva Marketing Systems, Open Systems Group, and Aran.

Still the right choice. Minihouse’s use of UNIFACE is subject to continual scrutiny. Piëst emphasizes, ‘We constantly look at new developments in the marketplace, but we’re still very satisfied that UNIFACE is the right environment for us. Our partnership with OpenPlus shows that UNIFACE is still our strategic choice: we didn’t have to choose another UNIFACE developer.’

Compuware’s statement of direction for UNIFACE Seven re-inforced Minihouse’s confidence, Piëst says. ‘For example, the WebEnabler is a very important step forward, because it enables us to put a Web front end on to our own product with little effort. We see both Internets and Intranets as big changes in the marketplace. For example, in sales and marketing, people on the road will be able to communicate directly with a central system via Internet technology, and so gain access to the latest information. UNIFACE will support that for us so that we can continue to concentrate on the functionality of our products.’

Challenging Market Leaders. When Minihouse started trading back in 1988 it had just five employees. Now there are more than 100; 300 if you count the cooperation with OpenPlus International, and the distributorships. What’s impressive is not so much the rate of growth as the way the company has achieved so much with relatively few staff: it has 300 corporate customers and a total of 2,000 seats. That productivity is perhaps one of the more obvious benefits of 4GL use, but one which can’t be overstated.

The future looks bright from where Piëst is standing. ‘Even though we are a relatively small organization, we’ve been able to build several best-of-breed applications. Now we’re ready to take on the market leaders.’

For more information on Minihouse/OpenPlus solutions, call 512-305-0380 in the U.S. and 31 50 525 1999 in Europe.