Darran Neary has worked in IT for 19 years in several different industries, from banking to facilities management software. Darran was first introduced to Magic eDeveloper™ when he worked for Kalamazoo, a company that produced car dealer software powered by eDeveloper V7 and V8. Later Darren joined our UK branch and worked with them for several years before moving to FactoryMaster, a UK-based software vendor serving the manufacturing sector, to become the technical sales director.
Magic Link: Tell us a little about your business.
Darran Neary: FactoryMaster is a U.K.-based company that has been in business for 12 years. We provide software to manufacturing companies of all sizes, but we especially target small and medium-sized businesses. We originally grew from providing aerospace companies with their MRP software, but we’ve grown since then and expanded into all types of manufacturing such as automotive and electronics as well as food and drink. Typical customers can be anything from Tier 1 suppliers to Rolls Royce aerospace through to the people who make the pie filling for Mr. Kippling cakes. We also have customers who build ships and other that do work with subsea oil and gas equipment.
ML: How large is your IT shop?
DN: We are pretty small and have only four developers, three of whom work with eDeveloper™. Because we are using eDeveloper, we have the same capacity for productivity as a much larger Microsoft shop where I would expect to see eight developers.
ML: When did FactoryMaster first implement eDeveloper and what were the circumstances of its selection?
DN: FactoryMaster first implemented eDeveloper V6 back in 1996. Before that, we had been using a product called Pro 4. We evaluated eDeveloper and a few other tools before selecting eDeveloper because of its speed and flexibility. We’ve been using it ever since. Most recently, we upgraded to Magic’s latest release, V10, in a smooth and easy transition.
ML: Exactly how does FactoryMaster use eDeveloper today? What types of applications are you building and maintaining?
DN: We use eDeveloper V10 for the expansion and maintenance of our core product, FactoryMaster MRP, which we sell in many countries around the world from the UK to Malaysia.
ML: Are there any particular success stories that you can share about FactoryMaster’s use of eDeveloper?
DN: Because of our ability to deliver a flexible, custom-tailored solution in a short time frame, eDeveloper V10 gives us the ability to be very competitive. This has allowed us to win bigger sales from companies that would normally have chosen products from other big players. As an example, we recently closed a deal with one company where we now have four sites in different locations around the world running our FactoryMaster software.
FactoryMaster was also able to develop a solution for our own Home market and then, without doing very much work, convert it to run in any of the languages that Magic supports. We now can release a version of our software and simply get the language translated to deploy in Russian or Turkish, for example.
ML: How did this translation process work for you?
DN: The translation is done using a translation manager that Magic originally provided and we enhanced. But basically there is a function in eDeveloper called MLSTrans that is used by the translation manager to strip out the functions that need translating. These stripped out expressions strings, along with the screen controls, are put into a file that is physically translated by someone. We then use the MLSBuild function to construct a new language file that we ship with the FactoryMaster install. This can literally take just a few minutes to prepare for the translation. The longest work is the physical translation of the languages by a human.
ML: What are some of the biggest benefits of eDeveloper V10 for your company?
DN: First of all, we have cost justified eDeveloper many times over. Often, when we have looked at other tools, specifically .NET and C#, to do the development of new modules in our system we have always found it to be much, much faster to use eDeveloper. The speed of development and the ease of following what someone else has built are the biggest benefits.
ML: If you could, what would you change about eDeveloper?
DN: First, I’d add the ability to call other systems and to have other systems call eDeveloper without having the need for extra licenses and complicated installs. In addition, I would change the licensing structure to make it more feasible and less costly to build Web-based solutions.
ML: What about product maintenance? How do you rate Magic?
DN: I would always give Magic high marks for their ability to react to issues arising from bugs in the product. I don’t believe any other vendor would be as reactive to get fixes to its customers.
ML: If you had the opportunity to talk with a group of developers not using eDeveloper, what would you tell them?
DN: I would tell them about the speed with which we can develop enterprise-level solutions that can be easily tailored to specific needs. I would also show them how any other developer can look at the code produced by others and quickly understand it and modify it as needed.