Sep 22 2009

Asite community revisited

Asite forum poll Back in June, I wrote about construction collaboration vendor Asite‘s revamped website and its new social media features. Three months later, I had a quick look to see how the Asite community has been developing….

  • Blog posts have been a bit slow in coming. Three in June, one in July, none in August and one more (so far) this month.
  • After a June Tweet about the company’s Summer 09 release, there was no Twitter activity until earlier this month (just seven – so far – in September). Asite is following five people and its Twitter feed has 27 followers.
  • There has been a little more recent action on the video front. A Fox Business Network news feature on Asite in the USA is available on YouTube, as is a short video about using Asite’s AppBuilder to select the winner of a prize draw from contributors to an online poll.
  • That online poll – which collated 81 votes – was in the Asite forum or discussion board. To date, 20 topics have been opened in the forum, 80% of them in the Platform and Product Development section. Perhaps not surprisingly, with an iPod Nano at stake, the Asite survey was the most popular item generating almost as many replies as the rest of the topics put together, and stimulating some additional feedback on potential system improvements.
  • The Asite Wiki (which appears mainly to be a glossary of IT-related terms) does not appear to be widely used. It has been updated just eight times since June, and onle one edit has been by somebody outside of Asite.

So there are some mixed messages coming from Asite’s social media efforts. The discussion forum is atttracting some traffic, with people contributing a few topics and viewing lots of the posts, and the recent YouTube action has resulted in more than 300 views of its two most recent videos. Early signs are that the blog, Twitter feed and Wiki could all do better, but it is still early days. As a PR, marketing and social media practitioner in the AEC sector (pwcom.co.uk), I tell clients that Web 2.0 is not about short-term wins; firms need to prepared for the long haul, and need to work proactively to establish and maintain conversations and relationships with individuals in their communities.

BuildLONDONlive 2009

BLL-logo

On the more conventional marketing front, Asite is involved with BuildLONDONlive again. It was one of the organisers of BLL 2008 in June last year, and is helping run the event again this year, which is being run 6-8 October [Update: now postponed to 15-17 December 2009 (see BLL blog post) – Be2camp text below amended accordingly].

BLL is “a unique mix of virtual collaborative event, architectural competition and a BIM exhibition“, and this year is focused on a site in the Thames estuary, east of the capital.

Social media is again being employed. The BLL Twitter feed has been revived from its hibernation after the 2008 event, and is (so far) following six people and has amassed 61 followers; BLL forums (run on the Asite platform) are being used currently to match-make teams and participants; the BLL blog had four posts last week when the competition’s registration opened, but nothing since; and the BLL YouTube channel features two videos about last year’s event.

BLL meets Be2camp?

wbw09logo

On its original dates, BLL 2009 was to have coincided with Be2camp@ WorkingBuildings2009, a two-day social media ‘unconference’ event that I am helping to organise at London Olympia on 7-8 October. As a result, I was talking to my friends at Asite about some kind of cross-promotion between the two events, and I am hopeful that we may be able to feature a speaker from BuildLONDONlive at one of the Be2camp sessions.

Certainly, I think there is a lot of potential synergy between the two events. Both are focused on using technology to enable sharing and collaboration upon information about the built environment, and I know some Be2camp participants may well be interested in participating in BLL or at least seeing how far any of the BLL teams go in their embrace of Web 2.0 to support their teamwork.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/asite-community-revisited/

Sep 18 2009

CAD in the cloud

I have talked in this blog a number of times about the potential for design applications to be delivered as online solutions (CADaaS, BIMaaS), where the application and associated data is hosted ‘in the cloud’, and some of my designer friends have pooh-poohed the idea. Autodesk, however, has at least been experimenting with the idea – in a post Try AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit without installing them, Autodesk Labs blogger Scott Shappard invites people within 1,000 miles of the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in a technology preview which allows users to access these products online using only a small client application.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/cad-in-the-cloud-2/

Sep 14 2009

Keeping an Eye on Woobius

I wrote about the low-cost simple collaboration application Woobius earlier this year (first here, then here), and they’ve remained on my radar ever since, partly because of their participation in one of this year’s Be2camp events (in Liverpool in May*), and partly because they subsequently approached me to undertake a couple of small PR projects for them.

Notwithstanding my involvement with Bob and his team, I am enthusiastic about this company and its application because of how they are looking to extend functionality away from the conventional computer browser and to enable real-time sharing of information using mobile phones. Their key mobile solution, Woobius Eye, recently reached the final short-list of this year’s Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition (the finals are being held in Amsterdam at PICNIC on 25 September).

Using the downloadable Woobius Eye application, team members can interact remotely with construction project documents and drawings, and can discuss project progress in real time. For example, an architect on site can take a photograph on site and use the mobile interface to share and talk about the image with colleagues back in his design office, complete with mark-ups and comments (see their YouTube video).

Since Woobius announced its short-listing, the company has been seeking people to test its prototype on some real-life projects (I understand the UK testers are likely to include people from Gensler, Make, Capita Symonds and Hayes Davidson, among others).

Getting increasingly mobile

Back in 2005 when I was writing the final chapter of my book on construction collaboration, I included ‘Increasingly mobile connectivity‘ as one of the trends likely to influence the continued evolution of the technologies in this space, and Woobius Eye certainly confirms this. While we’ve had portable computers for many years, the construction site has not always been an ideal environment in which to use one regularly for remote collaboration (unless one was using a particularly robust or rugged-ised device, and also had access to wifi or broadband). Mobile phones have, on the other hand, become more or less ubiquitous among construction professionals wherever they are, and the growing number of touch-screen SmartPhones with operating systems supporting an expanding range of apps is now putting construction collaboration literally at one’s finger-tips on a pocket device. No longer will professionals have to wait until they get back to the site cabin before browsing construction drawings or uploading a photograph. Instead, Woobius Eye users can talk in real-time with their fellow team-members while simultaneously sharing and marking-up images relating to their work.

Woobius is not unique in its development of phone-based tools, of course. BIW Technologies [my former employer] has been marketing a mobile defects management solution that uses hand-held devices since about 2006, for example. However, BIW’s solution tended to be used asynchronously and was only available for mobile phones using the Windows Mobile operating system (not the most popular mobile OS – update, 2 October 2009 – used by less than 5% of mobile internet users, says Admob).

Woobius Eye, though, changes the nature of on-site/office collaboration. What used to be voice-only exchanges can now include words, pictures, sketches, lines and squiggles to clarify each participant’s interpretation of the conversation. For professionals heavily reliant upon visual representation of their work, such functionality can help eliminate doubt, speed decision-making and reduce rework.

In 2005, I wrote:

” … as the technology vendors begin to embrace real-time collaboration more fully, and mobile connectivity becomes more commonplace, one can foresee a time when site-based team members might routinely view project information, make notes, or even hold ‘net meetings’ with office-based colleagues without having first to return to their site cabins.” (p.182)

Almost exactly four years after publication, that prediction is being realised. Woobius Eye takes real-time collaboration out on site and enables rich sharing of data with multiple team members spread across several different offices. And not just for design professionals, either…. I can imagine various scenarios where other construction team member might want to consult with colleagues – perhaps to look at health and safety or logistics issues, to review workmanship, to clarify plant operation, etc. Before projects, planners might use Woobius Eye to share their initial masterplan concepts; post-construction, you might get facilities managers using Woobius Eye to query the operation or repair of equipment with its supplier or manufacturer. The opportunities are almost endless, and almost certainly are not confined just to architecture, engineering and construction.

(* Woobius will also be participating at Be2camp@WorkingBuildings at London Olympia, 7-8 October 2009. One session, on the afternoon of 7 October, is focused on Web 2.0 and collaboration.)

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/keeping-an-eye-on-woobius/

Sep 09 2009

ShowDocument

Following on from my post about design review applications, I received a news release from Israeli firm HBR Labs about a similar type of solution. ShowDocument Now is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)document-sharing application that includes dedicated ‘meeting rooms’, secure online document storage and mobile device support. It supports various document types, including Word, PowerPoint, PDF, text files, JPEG images, web pages and video clips. It is a generic tool, so this range of file types should be adequate for many users, but support for CAD formats and other types of construction files would need to be added for this to be used in an AEC context.

The application is free to use, which is great for the casual user but if you were looking to use the service for long-term online storage you might wonder how the service is going to be funded. On-screen advertising is one answer, I think (the test environment had three ads across the bottom of the browser window – see right). Otherwise, I think ShowDocument Now is really a showcase for HBR Labs’ VeriShow service (also branded as ShowDocument Insite), a SaaS conferencing or online meeting solution that enables companies to set up synchronous online collaboration sessions on their own websites to interact with their customers. This is available on a 30-day free trial basis after which, presumably, users will have to pay to continue to use the service (I could find no details of how much the service costs).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/showdocument/

Sep 09 2009

BIW undertakes recapitalisation

One of the UK’s leading providers of Software-as-a-Service construction collaboration applications, BIW Technologies, last week announced that it has successfully completed a recapitalisation deal backed by its largest shareholder, NovaVest Fund 1 LP (advised by Tempo Capital Partners LLP). Around £3.5m in outstanding corporate debt has been settled and around £300,000 of new working capital is now available to further develop the business.

The directors of the company says the financial re-engineering has left the business wholly financed by equity, trading profitably, with cash reserves and no debt, making it “significantly more financially secure than its peers” and “best placed to capitalise on any upturn in the economy.”

Monitoring the UK sector over the past year or so, I have talked to several of the UK vendors about how the recession has made an impact and it has been clear that project cancellations and postponements have hit their revenues, leading to some belt-tightening and even a few redundancies. The steady growth achieved by the leading UK-based players like BIW, 4Projects (see post) and Business Collaborator up to this year is unlikely to have been maintained through 2009; the recent gradual turnaround in Asite‘s fortunes looked to be slowing in June (see post), and small player StoreData’s revenues have continued to slide (see recent post).

In such circumstances, a strong balance sheet with no debt, cash reserves and the prospect of a modest profit in the year to 30 September should reassure BIW customers about the business’s future, and BIW CEO Colin Smith is already talking bullishly about “a number of promising strategic developments which will begin to bear fruit in 2010”.

[Disclosure: I used to work for BIW Technologies Ltd, still undertake occasional paid PR consultancy projects for the company, and received a confidential briefing from BIW about its recapitalisation.]

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/biw-undertakes-recapitalisation/

Sep 07 2009

Sword CTSpace in recovery mode?

After looking at BuildOnline (UK) Ltd’s 2007 performance recently (see BuildOnline’s UK downward drift), I have been researching the recent performance of the whole Sword CTSpace group (in effect, the combined BuildOnline/Citadon operation acquired by Sword group in December 2007).

Poring through the 2008 Annual and Financial Report (pdf) of the Sword Group, I found various details of the acquisition of CTSpace. It also gives details of the contribution of the CTSpace operation to the group’s performance. For example:

  • CTSpace was acquired at a cost of $11.77m [about £5.8m or €8m], with acquisition costs of $1.33m [about £0.66m or €0.9m] (p.107) – ie: pretty much the figure of $13m or £6.5m I suggested last March (post).
  • There are also some pretty substantial figures (p.109) for liabilities ($20.55m) and Goodwill ($26.5m)
  • CTSpace was said to generate sales of approximately €11m per annum (p.109)
  • Total international sales revenue for CTSpace in 2007 was given as $15.971m [£10.9m at average 2007 exchange rates, or €11.67m] with a net loss of $6.277m [£4.29m or €4.59m] (p.111)- this mainly covers the period before CTSpace was acquired, of course.
  • Sales and earnings for the various CTSpace companies during the following year (to 31 December 2008) are given as follows (p.172; sterling figures shown are at average 2008 exchange rates):
Company Sales
€000		 £000 Earnings €000 £000
Buildonline UK 2,807 2,231 -36 -29
Buildonline Germany 3,085 2,452 925 735
Buildonline France 2,263 1,799 864 687
Buildonline India 3 2 -42 -33
Buildonline USA 373 296 66 52
Buildonline Ireland 12 10 10 8
Buildonline Global Ltd (UK) 0 0 81 64
Infotechno (Austria) 1,493 1,187 168 134
CTSpace (USA) 4,382 3,483 560 445
CTSpace Group Inc (USA) 0 0 0 0
Total €14,418 £11,459 €2,596 £2,063

These figures suggest that the first full year of Sword CTSpace’s operation saw something of a turnaround for the merged group. There was an increase in revenue over 2007’s figure, and the negative earnings were turned into a much more positive result. In the light of these figures (and those of Aconex’s UK operation – see post), I have updated my UK turnover graph:

Direct comparisons for 2009 will be more difficult, of course, as Sword CTSpace now includes offerings previously delivered by 2008 Sword acquisition ViaNovus (see post) and Sword subsidiary Cimage, which was merged with the CTSpace grouping earlier this year.

Depending on how the group accounts for its users, it will also be difficult to assess the value of the statistics given on the website homepage regarding the number of users, etc. We are told “145,000 users on 13,000 projects in 56 countries” – but these are likely to include more than one solution (BuildOnline, Citadon CW, ProjectNet, and possibly Fusion, Paragon, CadTop….). And given the propensity of many vendor companies simply to include all users dating back to day one, I am very sceptical of the value of such figures anyway (a subject that I have posted on several times: here, for example).

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/sword-ctspace-in-recovery-mode/

Sep 04 2009

Aconex UK jumps forward

The UK operation of Australia-based online construction collaboration technology vendor Aconex tended to lag behind its home-grown competitors, but in the past couple of years it appears the London office has made a great leap forward. The latest published results (up to 30 June 2008) show it dramatically increased its turnover and reported a healthy profit, vaulting it ahead of some of its longer-established local rivals.

Before the current recession really took hold, in the 12 months to June 2008, Aconex (UK) Ltd reported revenues of £1.909m, over three times the £0.552m it achieved the previous year (see Aconex (UK) Ltd – 2007 update). Simultaneously, a slight loss was replaced by a healthy pre-tax profit of £0.732m.

The UK business has also been expanding operations in eastern Europe and north Africa, establishing collaboration subsidiaries in Romania (Aconex Romania) and in Algeria (Aconex Maghreb); when I met Aconex operations director Paul Perrett recently he confirmed the success of their ventures into eastern Europe and into north African states.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/aconex-uk-jumps-forward/

Sep 03 2009

BuildOnline’s UK downward drift

Partly out of historical interest, I continue to monitor the company reporting of BuildOnline, a construction collaboration technology vendor which is now part of the French-owned Sword Group, today trading as Sword CTSpace and offering a portfolio of products from former offerings BuildOnline, Citadon and, more recently, Cimage.

BuildOnline (UK) Ltd’s Annual Report and Accounts for the nine months to 31 December 2007 were filed at Companies House earlier this summer and show that the troubled vendor continued the decline evidenced in its previous report (see BuildOnline UK revises past performance – among other related posts, below):

  • Revenues for the nine months were £1.511m (compared to £2.39m for the preceding 12 months)
  • Operating losses were cut dramatically, to £84k (compared to £639k for the previous 12 month period); pre-tax loss was given as £77k
  • Average employee headcount over the period more than halved, from 26 to 12

In its December 2007 report, BuildOnline Global Ltd, the holding company of BuildOnline (UK) Ltd, summarises the losses sustained in all subsidiaries. The total loss in 2007 was just under £1.8m:

  • BuildOnline (UK) Ltd – £77k
  • BuildOnline.com (France) SARL – €1.305m
  • BuildOnline (Germany) GmbH – €0.514m
  • BuildOnline Ireland Ltd – €7,522
  • Infotechno Baudatenbank GmbH (Austria) – €0.137m

BuildOnline was one of the early pace-setters in the UK market but it faltered and was soon languishing some distance behind [my former employer] BIW and 4Projects (see also previous post), and now being overtaken by other vendors:

Blasts from the past

Former BuildOnline CEO, Mark Suster – now a venture capitalist in California – has been giving some refreshingly honest insights into the early days of BuildOnline through various blog posts. I recently noted his account of losing a deal with UK water utility Thames Water (see I HATE LOSING!), and his description of the stresses of the early 2000s (Start-ups are all Naked in the Mirror) is good reading too – particularly to those, like BIW, who were competing with BuildOnline in the UK market at the time.

Update (14 September 2009): More on the early BuildOnline days from Mark Suster here.

Related posts:

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/buildonlines-uk-downward-drift/

Sep 03 2009

Good numbers from 4Projects

Latest results, for the 12 months up to 31 March 2009, show that UK-based construction collaboration technology vendor 4Projects enjoyed its most successful year to date. According to the latest returns submitted to Companies House, revenues grew 24% to £5.502m (up from £4.420m in 2008 – see 4projects turnover up a third), while pre-tax profits leapt to £1.801m (from £1.142m last year).

In previous years, the underlying profit figure has been higher, but substantial management charges were paid to a sister company (4Projects Management Ltd) – last year the fee was £720,000, making the real profit figure about £1.9m. Following the management buy-out in 2007 and the severing of the relationship with the Leighton group, 4Projects Management ceased trading at the last year end so no such fees were paid this year.

A dividend of £1.3m was paid to the immediate parent company 4Projects Holdings Ltd. I expect this in turn was paid as a dividend to its parent company Riverside Acquisitions Ltd (in 2008, the latter received £489k from 4Projects Holdings).

Staff numbers were up from 44 in 2008 to 63 in March this year (23 technical staff and 40 in sales, marketing and account management). Amid early summer industry rumours of vendor redundancies, it will be interesting to see if 4Projects was one of those affected.

Revisiting the MBO

Having downloaded various company reports from Companies House, it seems that the July 2007 4Projects MBO – the value of which was previously “undisclosed” – was worth over £21m. The report from Riverside Acquisitions says it acquired “100% of the issued ordinary share capital of 4Projects Holdings Ltd on 27 July 2007 for a consideration of £21,576,868“.

I speculated at the time (Valuing a SaaS business) about the possible valuation that might have been placed on 4Projects as a software-as-a-service business. I hazarded a guess that the figure could be well over £10m, possibly even double that – so I wasn’t far wrong. Based on its its revenues to 31 March 2007 (£3.218m), the MBO effectively valued 4Projects at around 6.7 times its 2007 revenues.

The Riverside Acquisitions report also gives some detail of the company’s creditors. Approximately £9.6m of debt is funded by bank loans (“repayable in instalments up to 27 July 2015 and carry interest at LIBOR plus various margins payable quarterly”). A further £10.7m of debt is covered by loan notes, of which £7.9m is held by by private equity firm August Equity; 4Projects MD Richard Vertigan, finance director Steve Nelson, commercial director Bernard Callaghan, and marketing director Duncan Mactear collectively hold around £3.4m of the remaining loan notes.

Riverside Acquisitions reported £1.39m of net payable interest in 2008; its £694k of “creditors – amounts falling due within one year” includes almost £447k in bank loan repayments.

4Retail

4Projects’ 2009 annual report and accounts show the company incurred some exceptional charges (£121k) relating to the establishment of a new retail-focused venture, 4Retail, incorporated as a new legal entity in April 2009. Working with various partners, 4Projects has created 4Retail Limited to offer a portfolio of retail-oriented technology solutions, obviously including its own collaboration platform, plus services and solutions from PMC, RetailPragmatist, theRetailEngineers and others. Recent client wins include Argos and Mothercare.

(As a web 2.0 enthusiast, I was pleased to see that 4Retail’s good-looking new website also features a blog, Blog4Retail, started in July.)

4Exergy

Another division of 4Projects, 4Exergy (“Extranets for Energy”), also has its own website, and focuses on the natural resources market (renewables, oil and gas, power and utilities). Last year 4Projects announced it was opening offices in north America to serve this market (post); it has just announced that it is planning expansion in south America (see NEbusiness article) too.

The design of the 4Exergy and 4Retail websites is similar, and differs from that of the main corporate 4Projects site. Perhaps the new look and feel will be extended to the 4Projects site in due course?

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/good-numbers-from-4projects/

Sep 02 2009

More design review applications

A couple of years ago (2 March 2007, to be more precise), I noted the emergence of some marketing-related online applications, ConceptShare and ReviewBasics, that allow, for example, graphic designers to share brochure and advertising designs with their clients and other collaborators. As a marketeer, I recently looked again at this creative industries technology area and found that it’s expanding. In addition to the afore-mentioned, there is also:

  • Toronto-based Octopz – which interestingly also offers access to its online meeting room service for just a single day – useful for one-off collaborations)
  • UK-based 2008 start-up ProofHQ – for a construction collaboration technology specialist like myself, this has potential as its platform also supports some common AEC file formats, including DXF, DWG, DWF and HPGL. The application can also be integrated with BaseCamp – which I know is used by some architects as a project collaboration platform.
  • Cozimo – mainly focused on images and video
  • inmotion – the interface of which look strikingly similar to that of ReviewBasics.

Alongside the likes of Basecamp, you might also include Huddle in this space too, which is also integrating with various social media platforms including LinkedIn, Ning and Xing.

Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2009/09/more-design-review-applications/

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