Innovating
since 1984

The Grinding Centre had an existing Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) built on a Filemaker 5.5 platform and also running on Filemaker Mobile on a PDA. This was periodically synchronised with the main office data. The system was old and although we had helped to maintain and improve the application over the years the time had come to rebuild. We created the new solution in Filemaker 13 with layouts tailored to iPhone, iPad and PC. The modern robust relational design (partial snapshot below) ensures that the solution has the scalability and flexibility to cope with more or less and change the happens to the business for the foreseeable future.

Lomond Capital, an investment consortium, planned to spend up to £45 million acquiring Residential Letting Agencies. They had recognised that in a market were demand for rental properties was high but funding for Landlords was being squeezed that there was an opportunity to grow through acquiring some of the 10,000 agents active in the UK market. There would be a natural economy of scale through market consolidation and centralising core activity. Changes introducing a custodial deposit scheme within Scotland presented an exceptional opportunity to rapidly expand in that region because many agents did not have their client fund readily to hand as the deadline was approaching. Brian Watson’s expertise in the property sector coupled to his knowledge of IT systems proved beneficial to Lomond not only in assisting in the due diligence process but also in appraising staff skills and understanding the different ways that disparate companies conduct what was to all intents and purposes is the same business process. Lomond Capital’s first acquisition was Braemore Property Management, a new town based company specialising in the executive end of the market, and this was shortly followed with adding the lettings portfolio from Slater Hogg. Next came The Lettings Service also trading as Premier Properties. At this time Brian took on a near full time role gathering all information needed to determine whether the business should continue as a standalone company or be integrated with another of Lomond’s acquisitions. The Letting Service specialised in student flats whereas Braemore and Premier were more geared towards the transient executive. There were clear similarities between these businesses and a decision was reached to merge the smaller portfolio of Premier with that of Braemore and accept that for the time being this changed the profile of Braemore by also adding the Letting service portfolio. However, to retain each brand the web sites of both were maintained and led into the Braemore site as soon as a property search was conducted. This ensured those seeking any of the former businesses could still find their way to the new company. The acquisition of James Gibb and shortly thereafter Charles White Lomond met a new challenge. These long established companies specialise in Property Management and Factoring with Letting playing a relatively minor role to each. Lomond were therefore acquiring the rental portfolio but not the trading style or brand name. Our role changed to extract core data and to help separate the two arms of these companies. James Gibb continued for a while as a standalone west end hub whilst other west end businesses were pursued by Lomond. Meanwhile the Charles White premises offered an excellent base for a south side hub. It was during this time that Alba Residential was acquired. As near neighbours of Charles White it was ideal to merge these businesses and because Charles White were continuing as Factors adopting the Alba name make good sense. Whilst all these acquisitions were happening in Edinburgh Brian also visited Manchester and Aberdeen were Lomond were making other purchases. The role on these occasions was purely to analyse data and verify claims. As Lomond built their business they gained staff who held the necessary skills to manage their business without the need to external consultants and we mutually brought our agreement to an end. It was an interesting 3 years between 2010 and 2013 and we were pleased to play our part in Lomond early expansion.

When it comes to giving an example of our e-commerce work there are so many sites we could chose but Gas Heating and Appliance Services Limited trading as Catering World have certainly been one of our longest running clients in this sector and there is an interesting history to tell. Catering World not only retail and wholesale new catering equipment but also refurbish used equipment. It was the refurbished side of the business that the site was needed to highlight the rapid changes in available stock. We first created a site for Catering World in 2004 using classic asp and sql. This in effect had three parts; an MSSQL database, an admin web site into which data was added, edited and deleted and a public facing web site where products were viewed. There was no mechanism to purchase online because the client desired to talk to each customer to explain fully about each item before selling. This site ran successfully for a number of years until the client was approached by another company who believed they could do better and they were persuaded to switch over to a Joomla! based system. Not only were they charged a considerable sum for this off the shelf offering but sales plummeted. They endeavoured to rebuild their online reputation in vain before returning to us to help. Fortunately we were able to produced a rapid fix at a fraction of the price they had been charged for the off the shelf solution by reintroducing their old sql database and adding some new attributes. The admin was tweaked and the front end adapted from a design we had created for another client with alterations made to fit Catering World's data. Whilst this solution was introduced as a quick fix and we have yet to build a new solution it did resolve the problem and sales are once again being readily made. We believe in delivering bespoke solutions and consider that the experience of Catering World helps to emphasise why we are passionate about delivering the right solution which need not prove as expensive as you might think.

LSL Property Services Group are a leading provider of residential property services. One of LSL brands, Your Move, are the UK's largest single branded Estate Agency business. First time buyers were important clients to Your Move giving the company not only earnings from property sales but also through all the related services needed to complete the purchase; survey, mortgage, insurance etc. Beginning about 2001 and continuing through to 2007 cheap credit had resulted in rapidly rising property prices that progressively squeezing first time buyers out of the market and allowed buy to let landlords to building their portfolios. These mature buyers did not need the same support as first time buyers and so Your Move’s supplementary income was suffering. During 2007 Your Move decided that the Residential Lettings Service they offered in select areas needed to be extended nationally to capture more of the Buy to Let market and broader their customer base. Brian Watson was appointed as a consultant to introduce a workable lettings service to the north of the UK and to develop a system that was capable of operating in the differing Scottish and English legal systems. Your Move already had a Property Management System built on a Progress 4GL database which output in XML and merged the data in Crystal Reports for print output. These had to be amended to account for the Scottish Legal framework but in the short term lettings were kick in the north of England. Brian trained the estate agency staff in the different skills needed to appraise property for let, set rent levels and to understand the minimum criteria expected from the rental sector so that they were suitable prepared for discussion with landlords. He also trained staff on preparing detailed inventories and how to conduct viewings with prospective tenants. The credit checks, lease preparation, rent collection and landlord payments were all conducted from Your Move’s existing facility in Winchester and so the staff needed to be trained to use the database application and input data. Whilst the northern branches were growing their rental base work began on modifying the system to meet the requirements of the Scottish Legal system. This process involved visiting the central administration centre in Winchester and head office in Newcastle but largely meant programming changes to accommodate the disparate legal process north and south of the border. The global financial crisis kicked off late in 2007. At that time UK property prices were about 30% higher than the IMF thought sustainable. Needless to say early in 2008 the property market went into free-fall and banks became far more cautious in lending and existing borrowers found there interest rates subject to reappraisal usually culminating in higher rates. With the sales market being under such pressure expanding the lettings side became a prime priority. By May 2008 Your Move had a fully operational UK wide lettings service and were suitably poised to generate much needed income via the rental sector to help offset the loss in sales revenue. Brian handed the on-going management over to Your Move staff just before the bank crisis. As of 2014 You Move now represent over 31,000 landlords across the UK and offer lettings from all 290 branches. It is nice to see this side of the business developing and Brian is proud of his achievement in helping Your More achieve their UK wide letting service.

The Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) is the UK’s leading independent road safety charity. The IAM strive to make Britain’s roads safer by enhancing the skills of these who use them. This is achieved though nationwide volunteers such as those at The Glasgow North Group of Advanced Motorists which is one of the largest groups in the country. Brian served on the committee of Glasgow North Group for 11 years and was a former chairman of the group. During this time he developed a database to manage group activity and web site for members and the general public. Committee members and office bearers can change annually and so the back end system has to be easy to use so that any elected member can administer the groups affairs. The core Microsoft SQL database and has only had minor tweaks since first built in 2001. The admin site has incurred a few changes over the years and the current version was written in asp.net VB. The public site has only ever had cosmetic changes and runs on Classic ASP. Members can be allocated permission to manage aspects of the public site regardless of whether they are a committee member. As you can see in the snap shot to the right this includes permission to edit pages, news, events and sales items. The site is a simple and easy to use as has been proven over the test of time.

Richard Bowles at Data Clarity www.data-clarity.co.uk approached us to see if we could help his client whose businesses were quite diverse being book publishers and retailers. The retail side needed an online database supported because they had been regularly let down by their existing supplier. It was imperative that the data remained available 24/7. More importantly as the database was built in Filemaker they needed someone who understood the product to offer an appropriate support mechanism to handle any problems that might arise from time to time. We were delighted to help Richard’s client, Philip Jenks, and set up a Virtual Server with Windows server 2012R2 hosting Filemaker Server 13 and a separate Virtual PC running Windows 8.1 with Filemaker Pro 13. This set up manages the backend operation for The Carbolic Smoke-ball Company www.carbolicsmokeball.com named after a piece of Victorian quackery which promised to cure influenza by releasing vapours of carbolic acid into the nostrils. Unfortunately, whilst it did plenty of releasing it didn't do so much curing! Needless to say the company don’t sell Carbolic Smoke-ball’s, indeed they don’t even sell soap, but do offer "Unusual Gifts for Professionals". Since setting up the Philip has added a second business supported with this same infrastructure. Vulpine www.vulpine.cc who create stylish cycling apparel. Vulpine was launched by ex-racing cyclist and film executive Nick Hussey, and quickly built a reputation for superb quality, attention to detail and passion for all things cycling. Their products marry technical fabrics, fit and construction with fine British tailoring and design. This allows their customers to wear the same garment for Ride & Destination. Philip plans to add further businesses in the future knowing that we will protect his customers and that his data will always be available as and whenever needed. Philip can of course manage his Filemaker Server directly via a web browser whilst Richard and the technical support staff at Brian Watson & Co administer the Windows Server and Virtual PC.

M-Tek BMW have been our clients since 2004 and over the years we have updated their site a few times. The current version is a content managed solution Back in 2003 Alan Coyle approached Brian Watson & Co to build an online game based on Motorcycle Speedway. This game recorded the results from real spedway events to allow those playing the game to build fantasy teams and participate in the Fantasy Speedway League. www.fantasy-speedway.com was launched for the 2004 season and has continued ever since. The core game has remained but a few additional prize winning opportunities have been added over the years. Speedway Star Magazine ran a mail based game and liked what we had created. It was a natural union to add Speedway Stars client base to the Fantasy Speedway game. Speedway Star clients joined the game in the 2007 season and remained until 2011 when Speedway Star elected to develop their own game. This proved a disaster for them when their now game turned out to be flawed and kept crashing. They returned to our game the following year and have remained ever since. As of April 2014, 12,848 people have registered to play the game albeit not all play every year; however, many register many teams and clearly enjoy the interaction with the game. The game is not just fun to play with an opportunity of wining prizes but it keeps speedway fans informed of what is happening in the sport. We are working on improvements that will take the game into a phone app so that fans can take the game wherever they go. This will also enhance the transfer process so the game is evolving. We look forward to completing these and giving the game a fresh lease of life.

McTours Ltd is not technically a customer because the business of 100% owned by Brian Watson but the site is nevertheless a good illustration of our work not only in IT but also in strategic alliances with several motorcycle dealers and hoteliers in many parts of Europe. From the IT side the solution comprises three parts; database, admin and public site. The Database is MSSQL the Admin asp.net ASP.Net Razor MVC C# and Public site uses asp.net VB. Why such variation? Well Brian wanted to learn MVC3 and recreated the Admin. The site had a makeover at the same time to incorporate HTML 5 and CSS 3 but was not rewritten. The business began because Brian is a keen motorcyclist and West Coast Harley-Davidson are clients of Brian Watson & Co. Brian had been asked to put together a guided tour in Scotland for some associates arriving from the USA. Brian devised the route and offered his expertise as tour guide whilst West Coast supplied the bikes. It was an informal arrangement working on the trust each business owner had in the other. This later led to the creation of a business that exclusively operated escorted motorcycle tours in Scotland supplying riders with Harley-Davidson’s. The tour offerings later extended to France and Italy where various supply problems arose. On one occasion five motorcycles had to be sourced from three different suppliers in Paris and this partly led to a reappraisal of how the business operated and the machines that the company would offer. The McTours name was arrived at by taking Mc as the common abbreviation and acronym for Motorcycle and Tours because that is what the business does and together they have a clan like sound significant with our Scottish base. We registered the brand name and logos as registered trademarks for further protection. The rebranding of this existing motorcycle tours business and severed the brand loyalty with the Harley-Davidson to extend the range of bikes available to include BMW, Ducati, Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha in addition to Harley’s. The business now offers this broad range of machines in several European tour locations and so has a bike that will suit every rider. So, if you are in the tourism industry - we understand your business. If you are in the motorcycle trade - we understand your business but if you are looking at this page and its mid-summer and no one is answering the phone we might just be out in the sunshine enjoying the ride!