Hire company software

[scjb]

just started importing Easyjob 4 data into Current to see how it compares. I like idea of cloud based applications. Keen to see how it works in practice. Too early to make any conclusions but will keep posting

Must admit, the cloud aspect is the part I'm having the biggest problem coming to terms with. First sign of service unreliability and that would be it for me...

[Pete McCrea]

I'm a fan of EJ4, so I'll state that now.

 

I have access to our server anywhere I have internet, the same as I would on 'the cloud', so I too don't quite get the need to put it in the cloud.

 

Maybe back up and making the server side to be someone else's problem is marginally more attractive. But then a VM for the server and nightly offsite back up of the core DB means recovery isn't to hard, and yes I have tested the disaster recovery plan it to ensure it works...

 

We've been running EJ for 6 years and paid £1800 for and £600 for the server. When we did the maths on the cost of Current, we worked out that we could have bought EJ and the server several times over in that period, so it's not even as cost effective.

 

The look of Current is very web UI style. And maybe I'm a Luddite, but I prefer the more database interface of EJ, as after all I'm trying to manage a database of equipment, costs and clients.

 

So we'll be sticking with EJ for the foreseeable future, especially as I can see if each job is making me profit or not ;-)

[Stuart91]

I'm a fan of EJ4, so I'll state that now.

 

We'd never have guessed otherwise… :P

 

The look of Current is very web UI style. And maybe I'm a Luddite, but I prefer the more database interface of EJ, as after all I'm trying to manage a database of equipment, costs and clients.

 

I had a good look at Current at Plasa, and whilst I didn't delve into the feature set too deeply, I was very taken with the look and feel. It's very iOS8 style, which I don't feel is a bad thing. I got the impression that it would be very easy to get our part time staff up to speed on it, whereas applications with a more traditional interface are often impenetrable at first glance.

[smalljoshua]

I'm big fan of spreadsheet layouts, I've got that 'sort' of brain. I do however like CurRent. Yes, I am a user of the software and have been involved since early Beta in April, I don't receive any 'perks' from promoting the software however.

 

The flexibility gained with strong integration with "modern" handheld devices on CurRent is great. As far as I can tell, it's 420 USD per iPhone license for Easy Job. I just log onto my current space via any modern web browser and do the same at no extra cost. We now have an iPad and bluetooth barcode scanner which works really well, plus we don't need to have specialist devices (EasyJob scanner).

 

Not having to install onto machines is great if I need to "borrow" a machine for 2 minutes somewhere. It's the only piece of "cloud" centric software we use. However, in the office. If our internet goes down, we'd have no emails anyway. Our iPads are on 3G so I'm not dependent on a single connection there. This also comes to site and I don't need to worry about maintaining an easy to use remote working portal.

 

Also, templating. I'm not aware of how it's done in EasyJob, but CurRent is HTML and Liquid Markup Language. It's a beautifully simple way of doing reports. Yes, the software is young, but EasyJob 1 couldn't have had every feature. A modern code base with "fresh" developers has seen a lot of work in the last 6 months, I'm seeing great progress being made with no issues post launch.

 

The service runs on Amazon's cloud services which are about as rock solid as it gets. We've experienced no issues since we started using the software. In the same time, I've had downtime from Office 365 (Hosted Exchange) and needed to take our server offline for maintenance too. With CurRent, even with our Domain Controller offline, we didn't suffer downtime with what is arguably our most important piece of software.

 

Josh

[steve@soundbp.com]

I can understand that when people first get into "Cloud" IT systems they think reliability. Just remember most of society use Cloud everyday. Facebook, Twitter, Your bank account...! How many times have those been down? Not very often and when they do they are up and running very quickly and not to mention the backup systems that are in place.

 

Cloud IT is an enormously growing area simply because of the benefits it brings to business (esp small biz) and if there was any hint of reliability issues then it would not be growing the way it is and reputation would have blown it apart.

 

 

For us we never have IT issues or have to waste time sorting servers and network issues out so our time is being used for what we are paid to (or dick about on blueroom...!) which is part of what you are paying for.

 

 

 

 

BTW - I have used Current over 3G tethering. Works really well. Thats my backup.

[mac.calder]

My issue with cloud reliability is not "Will the servers stay up" it is "Will the developer continue to maintain the project". I worked for an organisation that is quite large and has a long history. Our old rental management system (called rentals) was dos based. Long after the developers decided to no longer work on the project and move on to new and better things, we were still running rentals. When we found an upgrade path we liked (we went with R2), it went through vigorous testing before being rolled out - and it took over 2 years to complete the rollout. We still have one virtual machine for each state with rentals on it "just in case" we need to refer to old documents. Since we had the software and since we owned the license, it did not matter that we were running an antique system - in the cloud that would be different. Developer decides to stop maintaining the project they may give a month or 2 notice before they flick the virtual switch on the service.

 

Additional to that - we ran a wallchart planning software. Pretty much every company that produces this style of software will have a perpetual user license, a rental user license and an annual support fee (which is usually a percentage of the license fee). Once we were happy with the stability of the software, as we had non-expiring licenses, we stopped the support contract meaning that we did not have to fork out thousands of dollars a year for upgrades we didn't really need. In a SaaS environment, we would be continually paying the support contract as well as having every upgrade forced upon us without the ability to test for ourselves that none of our functionality gets broken.

 

I would like to see SaaS vendors work "cloud" apps differently - perhaps deploying it onto an individual cloud account for each license holder with a support contract style arrangement. If you are happy with how things are, you freeze your build. If the developer decides to abandon the project he hands you the passwords for the cloud account and you keep paying the bills to keep your virtual machine alive.

[Pete McCrea]

The flexibility gained with strong integration with "modern" handheld devices on CurRent is great. As far as I can tell, it's 420 USD per iPhone license for Easy Job. I just log onto my current space via any modern web browser and do the same at no extra cost.

£3 Terminal services app for your preferred mobile device and log into the remote desktop session. No need for €420 apps.

 

We now have an iPad and bluetooth barcode scanner which works really well, plus we don't need to have specialist devices (EasyJob scanner).

Again we use a £50 off ebay industrial wireless scanner back to PC/Laptop for barcode scanning. No need for the hand held device unless you want to.

 

Not having to install onto machines is great if I need to "borrow" a machine for 2 minutes somewhere. It's the only piece of "cloud" centric software we use. However, in the office. If our internet goes down, we'd have no emails anyway. Our iPads are on 3G so I'm not dependent on a single connection there. This also comes to site and I don't need to worry about maintaining an easy to use remote working portal.

Again Terminal services on laptop/phone/iPad and venue Wifi or mobile signal. Something I've been doing for about the last 6 years. And with improved 3G and 4G Coverage, I can pretty much work the whole way from Cheltenham to Paddington on the train, bar the black hole that is the Stroud valleys…

 

Also, templating. I'm not aware of how it's done in EasyJob, but CurRent is HTML and Liquid Markup Language. It's a beautifully simple way of doing reports. Yes, the software is young, but EasyJob 1 couldn't have had every feature. A modern code base with "fresh" developers has seen a lot of work in the last 6 months, I'm seeing great progress being made with no issues post launch.

 

List and Label designer. Yes maybe not as easy to use as HTML and Liquid, but then I have the experience of the last 8 years with it to get it to work.

 

Agreed that EasyJob v1 didn't have everything, and V4 and V5 still don't. But I think it can be useful to point out that you don't need to spend some of the figures Protonic state for some of the functionality. And yes, it's not a 'Cloud' native programme, but via Terminal Services it is very similar in terms of portability and usability.

 

Maybe in a few years time I'll re-evaluate and see whether it's time to move to something else.

 

I agree with Mac Calder too. I wonder what the contract states about ongoing support, and whether they can just pull the service, and also how easy is it to export all the data out of the system should you desire to move to something else.

 

And part of my 'dislike' of SaaS is that ongoing fee, which I guess is ultimately part of the vendors plan to increase their revenue.

[Stuart91]

Developer decides to stop maintaining the project they may give a month or 2 notice before they flick the virtual switch on the service.

 

The other scenario is that if a developer goes messily bust, you might get no notice at all.

 

It would be good if there was some equivalent of escrow for cloud hosting, e.g. if Amazon's cloud services could provide some verification / guarantee that they have been paid to continue hosting the service until xxx date. That would give a bit more peace of mind that they're not going to disappear tomorrow.

 

 

My other gripe with SaaS is that you are no longer in control of the hardware requirements. We used Capsule CRM for a while but have only one licence remaining for legacy purposes. It has some very nice features but integrating it with our other systems proved cumbersome. The final straw was that they rolled out an upgrade which meant that the service would no longer run on certain older browsers. It broke a lot of functionality for us and would have meant replacing some older machines that are otherwise perfectly adequate.

[smalljoshua]

Sounds familiar to me, I am also on an from the ground up rental management system, fully HTML 5 (no flash here people) site. Your first paragraph rings true for every true cloud software.

 

What are the features you have which no-one else has?

 

CurRent is also on Amazon Web Services which are stunningly fast and reliable.

 

Josh

[Andyb]

to companies trying to release new hire / rental software solutions;

 

Think about the type of users and companies you are trying to appeal to. I work for Enlightened, a growing rental / production / install & sales house. I would not ever consider running with a solution that could be considered a 'hobby' or sideline. I want to be able to pay for support - to give peace of mind that if the worst happens and we have a large issue - there are people on hand to fix it. I want the developer to have many people working on the project. I want them to be successful and profitable - so that they will support and develop the product. Financial reward is usually the only thing that in the long terms can secure this.

 

I am a fan of SaaS - but it must be recognised that even the likes of Google have trouble occasionally (we use google apps for business as a true SaaS). What chance have a very small team got if even the biggest can have trouble?

 

Enlightened upgraded from Hiretrack Eclipse to Hiretrack NX in the summer. Their support costs are reasonable - when considered against the size of our business, and the value of the business we put through the software. I agree, for a two man operation, it could seem very expensive.

 

The day I find a company (that is independent from the developer) that does not have at least one issue with their rental software - I will be impressed. Mostly this is down to all companies running & working in a different way and there is not a default solution that fits all users. Just talk to anyone in a large corporate company that has to deal with SAP :-)

 

Developing a solution inhouse is all great and well until that person leave the business.

 

Just my 2pence worth.

Andrew

[Derek Tallent]

We've been looking to make the move towards computerising our hire operations, but with all the move to the "cloud" and on-line access etc, I'm surprised that none of the systems I've looked at incorporate any e-commerce or online booking facilities for clients. If someone has any recommendations on that front, I'd be interested to hear them

[Stuart91]

We've been thinking about this sort of thing ourselves.

 

There's a lot of variables involved. I'm not sure if having a fully automated online booking facility makes sense. For example, the system might decide that you are out of stock of a particular package, and tell the customer they can't have it. The customer goes elsewhere, but if they'd been on the phone, you'd have scratched your heads and come up with an alternative with roughly the same capabilities. It would take a pretty intelligent system to suggest alternatives the way a human would.

 

What we decided we'd like is a sort of online enquiry picking service where the customer selects what they'd like and it gets gone over by a human before the order is confirmed. However it's on the back burner for the moment because there are other, more pressing, projects taking up our time just now.

[Happy Jack]

Bumping an old thread as we are considering a few platforms. Our needs are small and humble, so we don't confuse them with mountains; Current RMS appears to offer everything we need, but I wonder if anyone has any experience with Rentman before we commit to a trial? First impressions are very good.

 

https://rentman.io/en/features/crew-portal