Compuscript

5.2 Third Party Selection

Compuscript considered a number of potential suppliers before deciding to use Penta. Many of the vendors interviewed seemed to think they were able to provide the functionality required but, when asked directly, few of them were actually able to.

In addition to vendors, Compuscript also talked to customers and other players in the sector, identifying what systems they were using and the benefits and pitfalls of each. In this way, the team was quickly able to identify what they did and didn’t want from a system.
Penta was eventually chosen as the supplier for the typesetting system as it was felt that they offered the most flexible solution. Much of the customisation was then undertaken by L&M Imaging, Penta’s European partner company.

Additionally, the team worked with US based VSoft, a software company founded by Deana Vezina, ex-head of development at Penta.

“The suppliers we used were exceptional – there was no way we could have done what we did without their help”, commented Lyons.

The CTMS was designed internally using resources brought in from India to meet the company’s exact development needs. Compuscript started to develop the CTMS at the height of the Celtic Tiger when developers were few and far between. By looking to India for developers, the company was able to get far better value for its investment. By developing the system in-house from the bottomup, Compuscript will retain the system knowledge, vital if they want to make changes in the future.

5.3 Internal Team

The team in Compuscript was made up of three key staff members but involved the input of many of the staff in the company.

• Morgan Lyons, General Manager – Morgan was Project Manager and had overall responsibility for delivering the systems on time and in budget.
  
• Sudeep Ghosh, System Development Manager – Sudeep was hired to build the Compuscript Tracking and Management System.
  
• Neil Ryan, Systems Manager – Neil was responsible for the upkeep of the corporate IT structure and systems.

5.4 Timeline

By the time Compuscript’s application for the eBusiness Acceleration Fund was accepted in October 2000, much of the work had already been done on the CTMS. The full implementation of the Penta system was completed in early 2001 with the first titles going live in June of 2001.

The only major delay to the project was the availability of dependable, high quality software developers. “We just couldn’t get staff in Ireland – certainly not at a salary scale we were able to afford”, commented Lyons.

5.5 Budget

As with many of the projects under the eBusiness Acceleration Fund, although the Compuscript project is still ongoing, the funded phases came in slightly under budget. Although staff costs were lower than expected, the cost of training, for both users on the new system and for the development team on new technologies, was far higher than expected. Compuscript was disappointed with the in flexibility of certain aspects of the funding it received under the Acceleration Fund scheme. While the project came in under budget overall, shortfalls in certain areas could not be compensated by savings in other areas.