Bullish business update from MCS

On Thursday (13 November), I will be dropping in on Mobile Computing Systems 7th PriorityOne user conference, being held this year at the Building Centre in central London. Other work prevents me attending the whole event, which will include an update on the company’s performance, its plans for the future, along with product feature demonstrations and guest speakers. One of my highlights of 2013’s event, for example, was the presentation by Software-as-a-Service collaboration vendor 4Projects, revealing how the two companies were looking to develop complementary capabilities to satisfy mutual customers.

Last year MCS invested in its own SaaS capabilities, implementing a private cloud hosting facility in July 2013, and then launching a business intelligence reporting platform. It recently expanded its cloud infrastructure to support its growing users base, working with a new private cloud provider with faster, more robust and scalable storage facilities.

In the company’s fifth straight year of growth, MCS’s turnover for the financial year ending 30 June 2014 grew by 30% to £1.16M with profit up 70% on the previous year to £258K. There is clearly a strong appetite for the Priority1 mobile toolset of snagging (aka punchlists or defects management), quality control, permitting and Health & Safety and environmental reporting tools.

Update (16 November 2014) – As well as sharing some mutual customers with 4Projects, Priority1’s mobile solution is also used by loyal customers of other SaaS collaboration vendors. For example, Thursday’s user conference heard an implementation case study from Mace Group – a long-term client of Conject. Steve Fearnside explained how Mace had first tried Priority1 in 2004, and, at one point, the group had seven different mobile solutions in use to report defects. Deciding to rationalise, during 2014 it reviewed 11 different systems (iSnag, Snagr and Snagmaster were among those Steve mentioned) before selecting Priority1 (which was “not the cheapest”) as its new enterprise solution.

Another interesting snippet learned during MCS’s event: 4Projects will be renamed Viewpoint from September 2015, said EMEA BD VP Steve Spark (presenting a Viewpoint branded slide-deck).