RIB’s cloud-based construction collaboration platform has been updated, with its SaaS operations contributing about 13% of total group revenues.
In a previous post, I mentioned RIB‘s iTWOcx (the product formerly known as Australia’s ProjectCentre – acquired by Germany’s RIB in October 2012). A new release of the cloud-based platform was recently launched, with the business “thrilled to announce the much-awaited update to the Register Module … the Publication Space” (read the 1 August 2017 news announcement). This is apparently the result of nearly three years of collaborative development between RIB’s development centres around the globe, and incorporates several highly requested new features:
- New look and feel – document management is now more simple and intuitive to use, and there.
- Drag and drop uploading – with the ability to fill out metadata for documents while they upload in the background (“Upload and walk away”), and to send documents into the correct workflow and put them in front of relevant reviewers.
- Improved searching and reporting – including a new purpose-built search engine providing “intelligent search” tools and “Suggested Searches”.
- Mobile apps – a RIB iTWOcx app (in Apple iOS and Android versions) links users to projects running the Publication Space, allowing them to access, view, and store documents on their devices for online or offline access.
These updates follow improvements to the platform’s tendering module, announced in June 2017.
RIB financial update
The main RIB group, which describes itself as “the world’s leading provider of 5D BIM Big Data technology for the construction industry,” generated revenues of €97.9m (c. £89m or US$115m) in 2016, up 19% from €82.1m in 2015, returning a pre-tax profit of €33m, against €20.9m in 2015 (read the news release). However, the group’s Software-as-a-Service revenues comprise a relatively small amount of total revenues: €12.5m (c. £11.4m or US$14.7m) in 2016, and – with no acquisitions to boost revenues as we saw in previous years (with the Docia deal, for example) – grew more modestly, up 4.2% from 2015’s €12.0m.
