Jan 18 2011

Boardroom bickering back on the Aconex agenda

In a recurrence of wrangling that appeared concluded in 2008, a shareholder in Australia-based construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex has forced an Extraordinary General Meeting in Melbourne on 28 January 2011. The only resolution before that meeting seeks the immediate removal of chairman Martin Hosking as director of the company and was “received on behalf of Ian Baillieu and Hawthorn Glen Pty Ltd, who together hold approximately 5.6% of issued shares in the company”.

According to the EGM notice, Aconex’s Board has unanimously recommended that all shareholders vote against the resolution, arguing that it has already adopted a measured approach to board renewal and succession covering the next 12 to 24 months, that it needs people familiar with the Aconex business and its market, and that the envisaged board renewal will be important in navigating the current period of transition, both corporate and economic.

The notice outlines that all directors intend to oppose the resolution. With support from Francisco Partners (who invested in the company in September 2008; post), this should ensure that they have a majority, ensuring the resolution will not be passed.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that Hawthorn Glen was involved in a protracted year-long legal dispute with the company’s founders that was eventually settled out of court in May 2008 (post), though the company later admitted that the dispute settlement costs and associated legal fees had cost the company almost Au$3.4m (post).

I asked Aconex for a comment and got the following statement from VP Marketing, Frank Carron:

“The Aconex board has been unanimous in its support of Martin Hosking and board members have expressed their intention to oppose the resolution to remove him as a Director (and Chairman) of the company. His leadership of the Board, particularly as it helped the business navigate through two challenging years, has been exemplary. My understanding is that Martin also enjoys significant support across the broader shareholder base, and I would expect this to be reflected in the EGM vote on the 28th.”

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/01/boardroom-bickering-back-on-the-aconex-agenda/

Jan 15 2011

okitoo: real-time, mobile AEC collaboration lost in translation

Another service that I found after they followed me on Twitter is Okitoo. While it looks to be an interesting Software-as-a-Service mobile application for AEC professionals (developed by a France-based software developer Ideoserve SAS), it has been let down by poor marketing so far as the English-speaking world is concerned.

The home page shows an intriguing image of a tablet computer upon which mark-ups are displayed (and, on Twitter, @myokitoo tweets about using a Samsung Galaxy tablet). The site says you can:

  • share your drawings online in real time with your team, partners and clients.
  • annotate your drawings, sketches, technical documents while out of the office

However, the English language version of the website does not provide much information about the tools, the functionality and cost, is poorly translated and scattered with spelling errors, and silent videos showing cursor movements, with associated clicks, across a French desktop are not very helpful either. There are also broken links, and links to untranslated pages. Sadly, these do not encourage me to take up the offer of a free 30-day trial.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/01/okitoo-real-time-mobile-aec-collaboration-lost-in-translation/

Jan 14 2011

Asktobi.com

Launched in 2010, Asktobi aims to be an e-tendering-led ‘one-stop shop’

Gateshead, UK-based Asktobi is an “online business networking, e-commerce and information centre for the construction industry”. Its core offering is an online e-tendering system, providing tendering/subcontract enquiry and document management platforms, alongside third-party take-off and estimating tools (Take-off Live, and Fast-Estimate from Estek). The company also provides stationery and publications, and a supplier database (once registered, suppliers can be alerted to receive invitations to tender) and related forum (open to people registered on the supplier database).

The Asktobi platform is offered on a per-user license, starting from £49.99 per month for a single user up to £389.99/month for 10 users, though the company has also been Twittering about a free three-month trial. The company claims its system can save up to 60% of initial tendering costs for contractors and architects by by reducing staff time, resources and stationery costs required to run a tender or contract.

There are certainly substantial savings to be made through e-tendering, though Asktobi faces competition from, among others, the RICS and established vendors of construction collaboration platforms – 4Projects, Asite, BIW, Sarcophagus, etc – which have incorporated tendering into their core design and construction management workflows. But this is a big market; only 18 months ago BCIS was highlighting how most tenders were still posted or emailed to customers (post). There is also a lot of competition in the supplier database sector (Asite, for example, has had a company directory since it started, and there are numerous information portals) and many other industry forums, ranging from publication-backed discussion pages to LinkedIn, and places on industry social networking sites.

Launched in early 2010, the Asktobi business has been developed by Nick Mason (LinkedIn), a quantity surveyor formerly at Amec with over 20 years experience in the construction and renewable energy industry. He aims to create a ‘one stop shop’ for services for industry commercial staff (news release). Asktobi.com was incorporated in September 2009 with a registered office in Hexham.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/01/asktobicom/

Jan 14 2011

Bricsnet raises $10m

Latest investment round brings total invested in Bricsnet to over $65m.

This week, Bricsnet announced that it had completed of a US$10 million capital increase. The company, which describes itself as “a leading provider of technology solutions for Integrated Workplace Management – including real estate, facility and project management”, completed the investment round last month.

The round was led by chairman and CEO Hector Rodriguez, and was subscribed to by the company’s long-lasting investors, including controlling shareholder Torimbia as well as other existing shareholders. The company, which has main offices in the US (in San Francisco) and Europe (in Madrid), plans to use the funds to “enhance product development and services, and to extend its leadership in the growing market for corporate and public sector real estate management systems”.

It is not clear whether this will include investment in Bricsnet ProjectCenter, its online system for project management and collaboration. I did an online interview with Bricsnet’s Cristina Niculescu, head of ProjectCenter in Europe, a year ago – when she said ProjectCenter accounted for about 20% of Bricsnet’s revenues.

The fundraising announcement sounded very familiar and it seems to be a regular activity at Bricsnet. The company completed a $13m investment round in October 2007, and two rounds totalling $14m in 2005 (post). Adding this latest round, it would appear the business has to date received investments totalling some $65.4m, including its $18.4m IPO in 1999.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/01/bricsnet-raises-10m/

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2011/01/want-to-win-best-aec-collaboration-application-at-the-be2awards/

Dec 23 2010

Asite does enterprise deal with Canary Wharf Contractors

Asite seeks to differentiate its collaboration offering through its own definition of ‘pure SaaS’.

According to a news release earlier this week, London-based construction collaboration vendor Asite has signed a five-year enterprise deal to provide its SaaS platform to support Canary Wharf Contractors’ projects. I don’t normally write about new deals, but there were a couple of things about this announcement that grabbed my attention.

“… pure Software as a Service model”

First, to me, the Asite release includes a couple of slightly puzzling comments:

“The deal sees Canary Wharf Contractors replace its legacy project extranet software with Asite’s pure Software as a Service model.”

“Tony Ryan, CEO of Asite commented ‘It was clear from the outset of our discussions with CWC that they were seeking a future looking technology, with a pure SaaS model….‘” [emphasis added]

I talked to Tony about this and he gave me his personal perspective on what constitutes ‘pure SaaS’:

“For me, pure Software-as-a-Service is about being multi-tenanted. It has to be to give purity and clarity of service delivery across all your customers and end-users, with no need to provide different versions of your platform for different groups. Using cloud-based services should be about being able to turn up or turn down the service according to users’ needs, whether they are paying on a per-user basis or so much per-project. I don’t think the old £1000/month model meets every project’s needs. There are plenty of projects that just have 50 guys, and they just want to pay for how much of the service they use for as long as they need it.”

I pointed out that his definition would be challenged by rival SaaS vendors targeting the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) space. Tony accepted this, and pointed out that Asite was also expanding into non-AEC markets, where he expected customers and end-users would increasingly buy, configure and use Asite SaaS applications without direct contact with Asite sales people or consultants. This self-service element is also another characteristic of what other SaaS commentators define as ‘pure SaaS’.

While Asite’s model is clearly attractive to some customers (Tony enthused about relationships with Transport for London, the Environment Agency and Health for Scotland, for example), the focus on ‘multi-tenancy’ – where multiple clients’ projects are hosted on shared hardware – will also not appeal to every client. There are some collaboration clients (particularly, but not exclusively, financial institutions) that are very exacting in their hosting requirements and insist on having their data hosted separately. This obviously leaves part of the market open to Asite competitors who offer that capability.

“The company formerly known as…”

Finally, a small point: in its news release Asite didn’t mention the incumbent technology provider it replaced (BIW Technologies – who agreed a three-year deal in 2006; BIW release*), but it decided to use Twitter to gloat a bit, and to suggest that BIW has been renamed following its acquisition by Conject last week – plainly wrong, as anyone who read BIW’s news or this blog last week will have realised.

I asked Tony about this. He said he could see the marketing logic behind this (well-established brands with wide brand recognition within their existing markets), but he argued that a financial perspective would focus on driving costs down, meaning that eventually they would need to merge corporate identities. OK, it may be wrong in the short term, but he believed we would one day be talking about a business formerly known as BIW.

[* I worked for BIW from 2000 to 2009 (and drafted that BIW news release); my consultancy pwcom.co.uk Ltd has since undertaken PR/marketing projects for the company.]

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/12/asite-does-enterprise-deal-with-canary-wharf-contractors/

Dec 21 2010

Asite – steady

Asite’s latest trading announcement talks growth but the recession is hitting SaaS vendors’ project-based collaboration revenues.

Amid the flurry of discussion about BIW’s acquisition by Conject (post) and the NEC3 announcement regarding 4Projects and BIW (post), I almost overlooked a news release from rival UK SaaS construction collaboration vendor Asite concerning its trading performance for the year to 30 June 2010.

The London-based company says its revenues increased to £2.021m (2009: £1.891m), almost 7% growth, and with operating costs cut by a further 15% to £1.888m (2009: £2.215m), operating profit for the period rose to £0.133m from an overall loss of £0.158m. Asite also said:

“Notwithstanding the troubled economic backdrop, we have continued to win significant new business with key clients in our target markets. Our strategy to focus on enterprise deals continues to deliver success. With the release of our latest platform version, which includes some major innovative breakthroughs we have seen our pipeline increase dramatically both domestically, but more importantly, internationally….”

Analysis

As a former AIM-listed company, Asite has reported its financial performance regularly, allowing the market to track its nine-year climb to eventual profitability. In June (post), I noted Asite’s revenue growth over the 18 months to 30 June 2009 and a dramatic reduction in losses, and Asite finally achieved profitability at the end of 2010 (see Asite reaches profitability). But if you compare these latest figures with the numbers released last January, they suggest that Asite’s performance may have slipped slightly over the subsequent six months (a 3% drop in revenues, and profitability lower too).

Vendors are talking privately about the UK collaboration market being very competitive on price (it sounds like suicide bidding is happening in the construction technology space as well as in the contracting market), and Asite’s latest results might be an indication that the continued recession in the UK construction market is having a knock-on effect on SaaS vendors’ revenues. Unsurprisingly, and like its afore-mentioned competitors, Asite is looking to expand its international revenues – the company recently announced a distribution deal with ReproMAX in north America (post).

Update (21 December: 1.30pm) – I spoke to Asite CEO Tony Ryan this morning about the numbers. He says Asite is enjoying strong growth: “We are winning work because clients see how Asite can help them cut costs in difficult market conditions”.

And the growth in Asite’s revenues isn’t only coming from its collaboration offering. Asite also delivers e-procurement solutions, and Tony said revenues from this area had grown from 3% of total Asite revenues to 20% over the past 18 months. He also expected this growth to continue, particularly in north America where he felt Asite’s ability to manage the costs of a dispersed network of reprographic businesses would give it a marketing edge.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/12/asite-steady/

Dec 20 2010

Should we be teaching document control or collaboration?

Aconex is delivering document control training, but the technology aspect of collaboration is only occasionally covered.

As a PR and marketing professional in the construction IT sector, I keep my eyes open for new ways in which businesses are promoting themselves or their products or services. A good example landed in my email inbox recently, courtesy of an email from Yuval Attias, who works in the London office of SaaS technology provider Aconex, in the footer of which Aconex offer users the opportunity to attend a four-day course and earn a certificate in document control.

Most collaboration vendors have offered both basic and more advanced training courses for users of their platforms but – as far as I know – this is the first course claiming to offer a specialist qualification in document control in a construction project environment. When I worked at, BIW, an Aconex competitor, we often received emails or telephone calls from people wanting to learn document control skills – and BIW provided training about its system to help them (for the UK vendors’ body, the NCCTP, BIW also ran the first courses in online project collaboration for the Construction IT Alliance, CITA, in Ireland in 2005) – but Aconex appears to be offering a far more rigorous course. Students will look at:

  • Best practice records management procedures, based on ISO standards, as applicable in day-to-day construction industry document control.
  • Application of industry standard risk management principles related to document control.
  • Industry tools, including the use of the Aconex platform, to optimize and streamline project records management [my emphasis]

(The course outline, though, makes it clear that only the Aconex system is covered in detail.)

The Certificate in Document Control training course is being offered at various locations where Aconex has operations, from Australia and south-east Asia to the Middle East and Europe (no north American locations, yet), and the marketing strategy here seems to be one of positioning Aconex as the de facto industry standard for document control. This will be something that rival vendors will, I am sure, vigorously contest, but – for now – the first-mover advantage is with the Australian outfit.

Shouldn’t we be teaching ‘collaboration’?

That email arrived in the same week that I attended a Constructing Excellence members’ event at the offices of Eversheds in the City of London. Organised jointly with CE’s early career group, G4C, the event was focused on personal development (with a speaker from Dale Carnegie and lots of practical work), and the delegate pack included some information about various training initiatives run in collaboration (naturally!) with CE, including:

  • courses at BRE
  • a new Centre for Infrastructure Development at Manchester Business School (established by Dr Nuno Gil, for whom I have delivered lectures on construction collaboration technology in the past)
  • the Collaborative Working Academy delivering Award, Certificate and Diploma qualifications on topics including: collaboration and integration in construction; lean construction; and open book cost management (courses are accredited by awarding organisation CELL – a partner company of CE – which is approved and recognised by Ofqual).

Reading the information about the CWA courses, I noticed that there were no Award unit (some of which can also be taken as stand-alone courses) that addresses the technology issue. One of Constructing Excellence’s six key attributes of collaborative working is that the project team employs ‘common processes and tools’, and yet there doesn’t appear to be a unit that focuses on this. The unit would not need to be as detailed as the Aconex document control course (which is aimed specifically at document controllers, rather than construction managers, and doesn’t mention collaboration at all), but it might also cover other platforms, and their capacity to support some of the other attributes of integration and collaborative working. Often so-called collaboration platforms are used simply for electronic file exchange – and collaboration is about much more than shared file management.

Having run courses and done university lectures on construction collaboration technologies (‘extranets’ are often identified as an example of the common processes and tools, and BIM will be an increasingly important theme too), both on my own and in partnership with technology providers, I think this is an area that could usefully be developed. I talked to CE chief executive Don Ward about it briefly after Thursday’s event and have sought a meeting with CWA to discuss it further in the New Year.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/12/teaching-document-control-or-collaboration/

Dec 16 2010

BIW acquired by Conject

BIW, the UK market leader in SaaS construction collaboration, has been acquired by German FM software specialist Conject in a VC-backed deal, creating two complementary sister companies under a joint board.

conject-logoIn a landmark deal between two of Europe’s leading vendors of built environment-related Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), UK-based construction collaboration technology provider BIW Technologies* has been acquired by Munich-based real estate life-cycle management SaaS business Conject. The news was reported in Germany by Immobilien Zeitung on Monday – apparently somewhat prematurely as both businesses were planning a coordinated release of the news for the end of this week. The deal value remains confidential.

BIW, which has long dominated the UK market and has overseas operations in the Middle East and north America plus a software development hub in India, will now be part of a group with combined revenues of around €18m per annum (in 2008, Conject achieved revenues of €11.5m [£10.3m] and generated a profit of €2.1m [£1.9m]; BIW, in the year to 30 September 2008, turned over £7.3m, dropping to £5.9m a year later; post). The group will have some 180 employees, and Conject CEO Martin Reents is apparently aiming for the group to achieve 20% future revenue growth, encouraged by the German company’s continued growth within the resilient German economy.

As major players in their respective domestic markets for some years, the two companies have had occasional senior level contact since the early 2000s (it perhaps helped that until 2004 one of BIW’s early backers was a German bank, WestLB), but following BIW’s £3.8m recapitalisation in September 2009 (post), the two SaaS businesses resumed conversations earlier this year and a deal was finally cemented on Friday 10 December.

BIW CEO Colin Smith told me me the deal has been backed by existing Conject investors, EarlyBird Venture Capital and France-based VC company Seventure. The BIW shareholding held by the NovaVest Fund I (which took over the WestLB investment), managed by Tempo Capital Partners, has been bought out. The main BIW director shareholders – Colin, finance director Bill Flind and sales director Steve Cooper – are now shareholders in a newly-formed holding company, Conject Holdings Gmbh, where they also sit on a management board overseeing the affairs of both companies. BIW Technologies Ltd is now a 100%-owned subsidiary of Conject Holdings Gmbh, as is Conject AG. Both BIW and Conject will retain their existing identity and management (Martin Reents will now have a seat on the BIW board; he and Colin Smith also share the title ‘co-CEO’ of the Conject group), and continue to market their existing products and services.

Analysis

There is a good strategic ‘fit’ between the two businesses. Conject (a business I profiled last November) has a dominant position in markets in mainland Europe, and has established outposts in other markets, but has struggled to establish itself in key English-speaking markets, some where BIW has also established operations. Thirteen months ago, Conject told me that it wasn’t “planning to enter the UK organically”, but the BIW acquisition gives it one of the UK’s market leaders, and a customer base including some of the UK’s best known construction industry clients, contractors and consultants. While BIW has had ambitions to enter markets in mainland Europe, it was – as Colin confirmed – unlikely to gain a foothold in Germany and other central European countries unless it signed some kind of deal with an incumbent provider.

Moreover, while BIW has long supported the idea of design and construction information being re-used by facilities managers for operation and maintenance purposes, it is still mainly used as a project delivery and control platform, developing considerable expertise beyond document collaboration to include support for key construction project processes, from tendering, through contract management to project financial control. Conject, by contrast, has worked on positioning itself more as a provider of infrastructure life-cycle management (ILM), helping customers document and manage their built asset portfolios after project delivery; it does have a construction collaboration application but it is less sophisticated than BIW’s platform. With ‘whole life cost’, in both cash and carbon terms, being discussed again within the UK construction industry (I have seen the 1:5:200 model debated again at recent Constructing Excellence events, for example), a more holistic, cradle-to-grave approach to management of built assets could well be timely.

An €18m combined annual turnover (that’s around £15m or US$23m) will also help the group win business from corporations whose risk policies make them hesitant about dealing with businesses historically generating apparently low revenues (despite the visibility of order book and predictability of future revenues that comes with the SaaS subscription model). Of the pure-play SaaS construction technology vendors, only Aconex has comparable revenues (it achieved revenues of £18m in the year to 30 June 2009; post).

Conject has previously acquired other software businesses in the real estate and facilities management sector. Other acquisitions include project cost management business APSIS Software (acquired in 2002), BuiSy (2003), and Frankfurt-based computer-aided FM vendor Kopernikus (2006), all subsequently rebranded as Conject applications. This deal differs insofar as creates two sister companies under a joint management team, which will look to further develop the complementary nature of the two businesses’ markets, product/service strategies and resources.

The timing of the deal probably explains why BIW has not been capitalising upon its newly-won NEC Licensed Content Provider status, announced on Tuesday (post).

Update (17 December 2010): BIW has now issued a news release about the deal. There isn’t really anything new in the release, though both CEOs enthuse about the synergies created:

Colin Smith, BIW CEO, touches on the ‘reliability’ theme of recent PR output (post), saying:

“BIW has been expanding into new international markets over the last few years, and joining forces with conject will help us to build on that growth for the benefit of our customers. In these challenging economic times, clients look for suppliers who are financially secure, have a robust business model and global reach – and we can now offer them exactly that.”

Conject CEO Martin Reents says:

“conject and BIW share the same vision and approach to innovation and customer service. We recognised the quality and value of BIW’s applications, which are wholly complementary to our own ILM portfolio, and we are very excited to be able to extend and complete our suite. Many of our customers are world leaders in their fields, and have increasingly global and complex needs. Together, conject and BIW can offer them a service that meets these needs.”

[* Disclosure: I was an employee of BIW Technologies Ltd from 2000 to May 2009.]

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/12/biw-acquired-by-conject/

Dec 15 2010

See Howzee

Howzee offers a hyper-local service to manage the tenant/property management communication challenge at an individual block level.

Alongside my main focus on ICT tools to help teams deliver construction projects, I have also taken an interest in how ICT tools can be used to help manage completed buildings or other assets. This includes online facilities management tools, such as CAFM applications, but has also extended to hyper-local Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms designed for the people who actually work or live in the completed facility.

At the October 2008 Be2camp event (which I helped organise), for example, there was a presentation about ResidentsHQ, a private social platform intended to help foster a sense of community among new occupants of urban developments and to enhance communications between those residents and the professionals responsible for provision of services to that accommodation. I was particularly interested in this system as it was apparently deployed by Berkeley Homes in its Woolwich Arsenal development, not far from where I live in southeast London. However, perhaps as a result of the private housing crash since 2008, things have gone very quiet regarding ResidentsHQ.

Now see Howzee

A year later, though, I met Tuomas Saarelainen at the October 2009 Be2camp event and he told me a little about Howzee (which I later wrote about alongside a look at US-based BuildingBulletins – post). Similar in concept to ResidentsHQ, but developed and initially deployed in Finland, Howzee is now being marketed in the UK (targeting block managers and property managers in residential property management companies), and I recently had an online presentation and demonstration of the system.

Howzee is an “internet-based communication concept that enables faster and more efficient communication between property managers and tenants”. Based originally on a Microsoft SharePoint platform, Tuomas developed his prototype SaaS system in 2003 to replace a frustratingly clunky website that had been set up to manage the affairs of a residential block where he was a tenant. Since then, adoption of the platform has expanded and it is now used by 90 residential property management companies, and has around 100,000 users (one company, Karimak, uses the service to support 10,000 households in the Helsinki area). As well as promoting communication between residents and the landlords, Howzee can also be used for communications with service providers (building managers, cleaning companies, tradesmen, etc), and to support the efficient running of tenants’ associations.

Websites are typically established for each apartment block, and within each block site residents can have individual, secure pages devoted to their own apartments (containing, for example, as-built floor plans, fuel economy information, details of home security or fire alarm systems, tenancy agreements, audio and video guides on household equipment, etc). Alongside calendars and task-lists (residents can schedule repairs, request keys, etc), there is also a block-level notice-board function that serves as a communication channel regarding shared areas, and allows the block’s manager (or tenants’ association) to survey residents about issues affecting the building. Email notifications are used to alert users to new information requiring their attention.

 

Howzee infrastructure

The Howzee service is priced competitively, currently around £125 per building, which makes it an attractive proposition to property managers, said Tuomas, particularly because – being a SaaS-based platform – there are no start-up costs, no software to install, and no bespoke development is needed. The web interface can also be customised to suit the corporate branding of the property management company, and can be easily adapted to support call-centre operations, he said. And being a browser-based service, Howzee could be accessed from anywhere – indeed, 83% of users interact with the service from places other than their home (usually from their workplace), and, as you might expect from a service developed in Finland, the service can also be accessed via mobile browsers too.

As a measure of communication effectiveness, Tuomas said call centres had typically experienced a 30% reduction in incoming calls as a result of implementing Howzee, in addition to time and paper savings from digital delivery of information to households.

Howzee’s parent company Mobimus hosts the 24/7 web-based service, and has encouraged both customers and end-users to provide feedback on the service. Tuomas talked enthusiastically about this “innovation bowl” and about “R&D 2.0”, which had provided a pipeline of enhancement ideas from its users – with the most popular ideas being implemented quickest (future ideas include integration with Facebook and with Twitter). The service is also regularly backed-up, with a full back-up weekly and incremental back-ups daily.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2010/12/see-howzee/

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