People and Technology

Apologies for not gettting this posted by the closing date. But the ‘closing’ date on these things tend to be flexible, so if you’re interested if worth checking out the NEPP site. Mulley has already blogged about similar programmes at hothouse (docklands), sepp (south east) and m50 (Tallaght IT)  if you’re located outside of the North-East.

Our claim to fame is that FirstPartners.net went through this program in 2003. And failed. But failed quickly - we realised within months that the mad business idea (selling open source technology to accountants) wasn’t going anywhere. We were able to bring the lessons learned back into the main consulting business. Far better than a lingering , drawn out half-life.

More information is here (pdf format)

Enterprise Platform Programme
Enterprise Support for Innovative Knowledge based, High Tech and Information Technology Startups

Introduction
The Novation Enterprise Platform Programme (NEPP) is a programme of  support for graduate entrepreneurs with an innovative business idea in the Knowledge Based, High Tech or IT sectors.

The main objective of the programme is to develop the commercial and job creation potential of the participant businesses. The programme delivers comprehensive training in business and management to equip participants to successfully start up and manage a new business. The
programme assists participants in the achievement of personal and business development goals in relation to the project. It also assists participants in the completion of market or technical feasibility studies and/or the preparation of a business plan.

Past Participants
Since its conception in 2001, over 70 entrepreneurs have participated on the Programme. A survey conducted recently confirmed that over 54 businesses have been established by NEPP participants resulting in total employment of 311 people and sales of €27million per annum.
Participants have also raised over €39 million in VC funds.

 The programme will be managed by the Regional Development Centre, on the campus of Dundalk Institute of Technology. Participants may choose to be based in the professional, entrepreneurial environment of the Regional Development Centre, and will have access to the laboratories, equipment and resources of Dundalk Institute of Technology.

Eligible participants receive a consultancy / travel allowance of approximately €1150. Eligible participants may also apply for funding through Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation of Research and Development (CORD) grants, whereby they can receive up to 50% of their previous year’s verifiable income (the grant in total will be capped at a maximum of €38,000).

The Novation EPP is a comprehensive package of business development
support including:

• Project management and on-going monitoring of progress
• Travel / consultancy allowance
• Structured business and enterprise training to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to start-up your own business.
• Networking with entrepreneurs, industry practitioners, researchers and trainers. 
• Access to office space and specialist facilities, equipment and resources.
• Mentoring system which provides one-to-one advice and guidance
• Business Coaching which aims to optimise participants’ business performance
• The programme will commence in Sept. 2008 and there will be regular formal reviews of participants’ progress.
• Prize Fund. The 2008/09 programme introduces a prize fund for participants. Eligible businesses will be judged on a variety of criteria including best improvement, degree of innovation, presentation before a panel and performance at end of year tradeshow.

Flew Dublin - Heathrow again last week - this time with BMI (British Midland International). It’s what all Java consultants do - pop on the plane to London to see a client. Now I like BMI, not least because they provide a bit of competition for Aer Lingus. I like Web Checkin. A lot. See my post on how to use Web Checkin to solve Dublin Airport’s problems. But BMI have a (bad) secret about their online check-in that they don’t tell you until after you have paid for your flight.

Online or Web checkin means you print your boarding card before you leave home. It means you arrive at the airport , walk straight through security and enjoy a coffee while waiting for your flight to board. For Aer Lingus it’s great on a day trip; print both boarding cards the night before you leave. For BMI there’s a glitch; you cannot print your return boarding card until after you arrive in London.

What? On your busy-day-with-client-not-one-second-to-spare you are expected to start printing pieces of paper. What is worse, you only find this out after you pay your money. Called the Flight Helpdesk ‘we have a lot of people complaining about that Sir’. Mail to BMI customer service, no reply.

The moral of this story is not to complain about BMI (although here’s my Ajax related Rant about Scandanavian Airlines if that’s your thing , or Mulley’s lost baggage saga if you prefer). And yes, I should be glad of a choice of flights to Heathrow (see Limerick Bloggerand Bock the Robber)

No, the moral of the story is that IT systems (yes the geeky bits) can have a huge impact on customers in traditional business (you know, the ones that pay you money). Being the helpful people we are, we’ll even show BMI how to fix this using Business Rules. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the BMI system code, Someone, a long long time again decided ‘no one will ever want to check in before they leave’ . And now that it’s spaghetti code, it can’t be fixed, leaving a lot of unhappy customers.

I don’t slag people off on this blog. If I’m annoyed enough to talk about people in public, then I should at least talk to them privately first. Up until now, that’s been good enough to resolve most things.

So for Dolan and Company / CMR Accountants to get the honour of being critisied in public, they must have behaved pretty badly. Yes, they’re the ones located at the Steelworks in Foley Street Dublin (near Busaras, Connolly Train station). They’re now our Ex-Accountants, for reasons that will soon become clear.

Dolan and Co were our company accountants from Dec 03 until Mar 06. We’re not the biggest of companies. Our accounts could probably be done using Excel by somebody with a Leaving Certificate qualification. We prefer to subcontract rather than employ people, so that makes our accounts even easier.

So what have Dolan done to annoy us so much?

Overcharging. We had a set monthly fee for their services, paid by direct debit. Easy enough? Even if a mistake was made, it shouldn’t be too hard to sort out. Well no actually. During the last 15 months of our arrangement, I spent more time on the phone to Dolan / CMR about the fees than talking to them about the actual accounting service. While I wasn’t happy at the end, Dolan agreed to refund me a set figure in March last year and I moved to another accountants.

End of story, or so I thought. Not nice, but not enough reason to blog about it.

Ok, so how have they really annoyed you?

The basic reason to have an accountant is to file accounts with the Revenue Commisionars (Government Tax Department). These accounts / reports are (i) How much money you take as Salary from the business and (ii) How much VAT you owe the Government (based on your Sales).

Not surprisingly, the government takes a very dim view if you don’t file these accounts / reports on time. Fortunately , they’re easy enough, so long as you keep on top of them. For example, you can pay your Tax every month by Direct Debit. At the end of the year, you file a final report and pay any (small amount due).

Here’s the problem. For 2005 , Dolan / CMR set up a the Direct Debit but did not make the final report. This is despite assuring me that that the return had been made when we signed off the accounts at the end of the Year. (You know who you are). While I do not owe any tax (because we paid by DD monthly), the Revenue are entitled to fine me several thousand.

My new accountants say it will take them about 5 minutes to complete and post via the web (the ROS.ie website).

I will accept a large part of the blame for this - after all it is me , not the accountants, that they Revenue Commissionars will chase. But if you (a) are paying a professional service company to do work and (b) they tell you that this (basic) work has been carried out, would you not be annoyed to find out that it hadn’t?

I’ve left the comments section open for Dolan / CMR to reply if they see fit.

Thanks to Martin Boylan and Co (Drogheda) , our new Accountants, who are helping tidy up this mess.