Posted by John Minto on Mon, Mar 26, 2012
We recently attended the construction sector network group seminar delivering BIM in the Sheffield city region. The interest in this is being driven by the recent government announcement!
“The UK government has mandated the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) on all publicly procured projects over £5m from 2016. The primary aims being to reduce Construction and Whole Life Costs and Carbon Performance”
The speakers at the meeting were main consultants, main contractors and architects. The audience from what we could see were a mixed cross section of the building industry, main contractors more specific MEP contractors some architects and a few other vendors. Most of the audience were not using BIM and only three in the room put their hands up as being BIM experts.
From Mintronics point of view the entire evening was very useful and we will be making further comment as the main problem with BIM is in fact sharing data and of course in M-Files we do have the perfect fit for this, M-Files being a product which is deeply rooted in the building industry
First
Our main observation and comment to anyone in the building industry would be to go and take a look over the fence at the mechanical engineering industry. The entire evening at Sheffield sounded the same as meetings for the mechanical engineering sector some six to eight years ago. Then the driver for change to 3D was not a government policy but competitors from overseas, coming to the UK and beating our incumbent businesses by being more efficient and controlling costs, the main driver of course was better design through 3D systems and sharing of data with the supply chain through product data management tools.
Years on I would suggest that the mechanical engineering industry has now adopted the lean way of designing and building things. Today you will find advanced 3D systems in some of the smallest profiling and milling, job shops in this country. Small businesses working in the nuclear and aerospace industries sharing data and information, many of these can only be classed as first class and successful.
The same discussions we heard the other night at Sheffield were common back then within the mechanical engineering industry
How will we afford a system?
How can we work with the OEMs who send us 3D models electronically instead of paper drawings?
How do we know if changes in design will affect other products we produce?
What is this 3D modelling?
By and large the companies worked out the answers for themselves; those that did not often faltered and went out of business.
The industry went and found solutions and technologies which were easy to use and systems that could interchange data with the systems used by OEMs. Alibre from Mintronics was a prime example, a low cost CAD tool which has a built in translator for CATIA, Inventor and many other 3D systems.
Many of the early adopters and OEMs were working with systems that had cost £20,000 per licence and yet Alibre and other similar systems were able to offer similar benefits and cost savings at a fraction of that price.
It is our view that the architectural building industry will follow a similar path, within a short time the members of this industry will find easier and less costly ways to move across the bridge to BIM.
We believe that Mintronics can play a big part in this with our BIM IDEA program, priced at £1300 it is based on the DWG file format so learning it will be easy and it interchanges data through the IFC and DWG. It offers exactly the same as our other two main products Alibre and M-Files, excellent value for money at prices people can afford.
Look for our next blog BIM Squared
For a trial of IDEA BIM follow this link
Posted by John Minto on Tue, Feb 21, 2012
When deciding which shows to exhibit at during 2013, Mintronics (resellers of software including M-Files, Alibre and IDEA) felt particularly keen to visit the 2012 Southern Manufacturing show, which took place on 15-16th February in Farnborough.
So as the Mintronics Sales Director I signed up and went along to the show and was pleased to discover over 450 engineering related companies, covering all sectors from aerospace, defence, automotive, offshore to medical.
The general feel off the show was positive and I had many interesting discussions with exhibitors and visitors along the main themes of document management and ISO9001 compliance.
It was nice too see that some visitors had come to Farnborough without any pre-conceptions of the show. They had an instantly recognisable ‘frontier’ or ‘exploratory’ approach to their journey around the stands.
If we decide to exhibit at the show next year, we would not be an engineering supplier of machine tools, hardware or components. So we wouldn’t have tangible familiar objects for people to hold….so how would people distinguish our services, understand our business, feel persuaded to come on the stand and talk to us and most importantly, how would they remember us after the event?
Most of the stands were very professional and my mind kept drifting to how we could exhibit in 2013. Other than those which were clearly very costly and large scale, others that stood out seemed to fit into one of two distinct categories:
1. Service with a Smile
Obviously these were the stands where visitors were met with a friendly smile and a natural conversation. Rather than aim for an immediate sale these stands were manned by professionals who demonstrated expert networking techniques and every discussion either seemed to provide a lead or a useful fact. Better still these people left me, as the visitor, with a very positive feeling about the organisation over and above the professionalism of the staff and the stand.
2. The Dynamic Approach
The other category was where there was something dynamic about the stand. I found that with some stands my visual senses were immediately engaged and my brain was busy trying to take in all the information and visual delights around me.
An example of a big visual “hook” was one company displaying automatic roller doors that instantaneously stopped if you put your hand near them. In the 2 or 3 minutes I watched, they successfully engaged lots of visitors whilst simultaneously obtaining referrals and leads from their suitably impressed audience. In fact they got 2 leads from me!
My favourite stand was a contract manufacturer who had 50 or so chocolate eggs in egg cups made from springs (one of his products). The moment you looked at the eggs he gave them a gentle spring and smiled. It broke the ice and the conversation started rolling. It was his business and he enjoyed running it. Amazingly within 15 minutes of the start of day one, one of the other exhibitors had fallen for the springy egg and had identified a component they made as one he bought. They then started to discuss a quote……that sounded like a great result to me.
The two important things I took from the day were:
1. Remember that people are visiting your stand so be genuinely welcoming
2. Do something dynamic or engaging… It doesn’t need to be a large statement. A single chocolate egg in a spring can make a big difference to the number of people wanting to come to your stand and more importantly wanting to have a conversation with you.
We hope to be in Farnborough with our own take on 'springy eggs' in February 2013!
Mark Snell
Mintronics
Posted by John Minto on Mon, Feb 20, 2012
by Mark Snell
Mintronics have recently become aware of more cases where the potential breach in the security of a company’s information is of critical importance. We believe this is being highlighted even more so in the current economic climate where people’s future is less certain within companies and new customers are ever more important to the survival and ultimately growth of a business.
Much of the information below is taken from an M-files blog.
The real threat of data breach comes from within an organisation
Many companies install their server firewalls and anti-virus software and assume they have the issue of data security covered. While these measures protect against outside intrusion, they fail to target the biggest source of data tampering, as well as the most harmful.
According to research by computer consultant giant Gartner, company employees are usually the culprits of unauthorized access — 70% of the time. Perhaps more troubling, employee cases comprise 95% of the breaches that cause the company significant financial losses.
How can companies gain better internal security for their data?
A good place to start is to go paperless. Talk of “data” in the context of company leaks makes one think of only digital content, but actually 49% of the reported access violations involve paper files, according to a Ponemon survey. Paper files are particularly vulnerable to information breaches because it is difficult to know where a paper document has been, who has seen it, or for that matter, whether it is missing or just misplaced. Moving to an all-digital format at very least gives companies a platform on which to establish effective security controls.
The same Ponemon study makes a distinction between different modes of digital data. ‘Unstructured’ data — the files scattered among hard drives, laptops, and servers in standard Windows folders — constitute the low-hanging fruit for data violators. These unstructured files are not embedded in any kind of document management system to track their usage or control their access. A simple file management application can structure company documents into a centralized database system that logs an auditable history of users’ file operations for each document.
Structuring company files also makes password protection more practical. An administrator can make certain documents available only for certain managers (like the head of HR for personnel files) or for a whole department (engineering for CAD design files). Admin can also set up pre-set authorization rules for recurring documents, making sure protection is consistently applied to potentially sensitive material.
When managers have the ability to audit a trail of document usage and establish the rules of access into employees’ daily workflow, then a document management system itself becomes a deterrent to bad employee behavior. The temptation to steal or sabotage company data is countered by the threat of getting caught. To ensure internal data security, managers need to foster an atmosphere of accountability — backed up by real measures to prevent unauthorized access.
If you would like to find out how M-Files can help your security take a free trial
Posted by John Minto on Fri, Feb 10, 2012
How to find a file or document?
Posted By Mark Snell 10 February 2012
Trying to find a document in your business is relatively easy if you are new company with a small number of employees however after a few years or even months this very simple task can become frustrating and very time consuming and costly.
Very quickly this turns into not being able to meet a quality standard, having the wrong documents in a customer folder, building something to an out of date drawing basically this means your company is losing money.
The thoughts are then how to solve the problem which leads to investigating the use of a document management system. If you go to a system such as M-Files the ability to find a document becomes very easy because of this a lot of the tasks you do to control your documents become very trivial, automatic and low cost.
To see how easy it is to find a file, you will be doing it within seconds once you have downloaded the free trial software. You will be then be able to see how quickly you can apply the SMAVIE filter to your business Save Money, Add Value and Increase Efficiency……..and it all starts with being able to find the latest file every time immediately with one click of the mouse.
Go ahead and try a free trial of M-Files for 30 days
Posted by John Minto on Thu, Feb 09, 2012
Posted by Mark Snell 9th February 2012
Today people appear to be more prudent than ever about their investments in document systems. We find that the decision making process takes longer than before and often involves more people.
I have used many CRM’s myself and they nearly always improve the selling process. They successfully capture data, provide control and produce statistics.
The top summary level data is very good, but what if you want to quickly access all of the relevant e-mails and latest budget spreadsheets, and you're not in the office? For the team at Mintronics this is often the scenario.
Whilst beiing out on the road we might get asked detailed questions, which is OK if its a known client and several detailed discussions have already taken place.
But being reliant on a very good memory and ensuring that file management systems are always up to date can be difficult to achieve.
With M-Files once you have gained access to your secure vault via a web browser you instantaneously have all of the information to hand linked to your CRM.
So when your client contacts you about a tender you submitted a while ago, having M-Fle makes for a much more measured and meaningful discussion with the client who values your attention and knowledge of the specific issues affecting his/her business.
M-Files can integrate with any CRM system due to its ability to tag documents however it comes out of the box ready to work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com.
M-Files is a Microsoft gold partner so it sits within all the standard Office products as just another function that you can connect to with a click if the mouse.
So fortunately for me anyway, memory and admin are not called upon to save the day, and the client is always kept happy!
Mark Snell
Mintronics Sales Director
Posted by John Minto on Sun, Feb 05, 2012
At last we are able to announce that Mintronics have signed with 4M to bring their range of BIM products to the UK market.
This completes the circle from mechanical CAD with Alibre, architectural CAD from 4M and data being managed and controlled by M-Files document control system.
4M are long time members of the intellicad Technology Consortium and bring twenty six years of DWG file format development which has culminated in their leading range of products for the architectural market.
We concluded from our studies this past year that IDEA the BIM system from 4M is way ahead of its competitors
Users can learn it very quickly especially if they know AutoCAD and DWG, inside each licence of IDEA is a full licence equivalent of AutoCAD so users can move to BIM at their own pace.
Priced at £1250.00 we believe that IDEA is the best value BIM product on the market. 4M have developed much further than BIM and have additional systems from their FINE range dealing with the whole spectrum of the Electrical and Mechanical Building Applications (Heating, Air Conditioning, Insulation, Refrigeration, Plumbing, Electrical Networks, Fire Protection, Gas Installations etc). We will soon be starting with BIM and then adding the FINE range in the coming months
To sign the agreement with 4M I visited their offices in Athens and undertook two days of training in the company of 4M resellers from France. Athens is not quite what you see on the television and with 4M the Greeks have a company they should be proud of, successfully exporting their BIM software all across the globe.
All our team are excited about the prospects not only being able to offer a world leading system to the architectural industry but also in conjunction with M-Files allowing our customers to maximise their return on investment and improve their profits by managing their data.
SMAVIE is the word and IDEA from 4M falls exactly into this category. Save money, add value and improve efficiency
Look out for our website as we make the changes and include extra pages for IDEA and all 4M range of softwares
Posted by John Minto on Wed, Feb 01, 2012
by Mintronics Sales Director, Mark Snell
Yesterday, Sir Tom Farmer, the very successful entrepreneur (of Kwik Fit fame) gave a talk in Gateshead to coincide with the launch of the Yours Business Networks Gateshead programme for this year.
I had always wanted to hear Sir Tom talk; I was very pleased I went. His talk was simultaneously streamed to Your Business Networks at King's Lynn, Norwich, Nantwich and London.
Sir Tom Farmer
As I expected he was a very naturally engaging leader and entrepreneur but I think the things I picked up were some of the comments about keeping things simple and don't overcomplicate matters. Work hard and effectively and aim to improve things everyday, week and month.
It was easy to imagine how his companies' success was due to his ability to engage with both staff and customers. Little gems included not using the job titles Human Resources or Personnel but People Director.
He also said that they had found conducting Exit interviews as people left a company a waste of time, it was far better to invite them back after say 6 months 'over a cup of tea' when the person would give a more open and objective view of their time with the company.
I certainly left feeling very motivated to drive our software reselling business forward.
After the event when I was going to my next meeting, it set me thinking that one of Tom's key messages was to get better but more consistently over a long duration; it was this kind of attitude that he believed set you apart from your competitors. He said that he often sold very similar products to his competitors but it was the improved consistent level of service they offered that made the difference.
We firmly believe that M-Files enable people to work more effectively in their day to day business putting into place a good foundation to make gains and improvements on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. We however also have to ensure that we are improving our service.
Posted by John Minto on Sun, Jan 29, 2012
Hi,
I am 4 months into joining Mintronics as a partner, and am now a proud a shareholder in the company. The reason for my involvement was simple. I wanted to build a business and had been looking for a product that would appeal to a broad range of businesses.
At Mintronics we aim to fulfil the Mantra:
“You should only do something in a business if it meets the ‘SMAVIE’ filter...
Save Money Add Value or Increase Efficiency.”
This fits with my own business ideals.
I had been working on several successful projects, often as the project manager. One constant theme was in spite of setting up project control; particularly document systems; there was an obvious issue concerning maintenance and efficiency. The subsequent effort of maintaining project records was do-able but required a huge amount of focussed effort, usually omitted from the original project budget.
The projects, predominantly in engineering, often had full time and part time members, employees and sub-contractors, all joining a stand-alone project. The need to get people up to speed quickly was imperative as mistakes made would take a while to be identified, costing the project both time and money.
After I met John Minto and David Jupp of Mintronics, they demonstrated M-Files Document Management System. Immediately I realised that here was a solution to most of those frustrations that arise in a project environment. This is especially the case if safety compliance, manufacturing or quality is a critical factor, as of course it is in engineering. As important, due to its configurability, we can provide a system that meets 70 to 90% of the customers needs out of the box and at a significantly lower price than the traditional bespoke and expensive Document Control Systems.
Initially we decided to target engineering companies as this was our natural territory. In other countries resellers have sold M-Files to firms in the legal and financial sectors, medical and healthcare, pharmaceutical and architectural.
Very quickly Mintronics’ enquiries started to come from other industries including publishing, medical, surveying and IT. In fact our enquiries have increased six-fold in 4 months. The universal theme is to use less effort to provide better project control and automatically produce fully auditable trails for compliance.
My personal project irritations include:
1) Which is the latest version of a document?
2) How to find information in a fast moving project.
3) In a project with many individual partners/customers such as ERDF funding, being able to find things instantaneously is difficult.
4) Spending a long time finding a document misfiled by someone else.
5) Having to generate and monitor large amounts of e-mail traffic to move the project on.
6) Traditional disciplined project environments can become cumbersome and inefficient to maintain compliance.
7) Dreading the Compliance Audit due to hidden and as yet undiscovered problems.
All of these pains and irritations can be overcome dramatically improving the efficiency and communication within the project team. The ability to remove these frustrations frees up time, significantly reducing the need for rework and making more time available to add value to the project.
One of the most striking qualities of the product is that M-Files can be used by small, medium and large companies across all sectors, opening up systems that were previously only the preserve of larger organisations. The level of IT literacy needed is relatively low and again removes a barrier of entry for smaller companies.
A surprising number of IT companies see it as a box of tools that can be used as a 'glue' between other systems enabling them to develop new products for their clients. We are currently in talks with several IT businesses to work with clients in specific channels.
If you have read with interest and are keen to learn more, please get in touch or browse the rest of our website and download an M-Files free 30-day trial. The benefits will soon become apparent, whatever your role and business type.
Mark Snell
Posted by John Minto on Wed, Nov 30, 2011
Document control for the Healthcare industry
At Mintronics we specialise in the engineering, process and manufacturing industries, in fact we pride ourselves on not being an IT company.
We are more interested in the processes within a business and how we can apply our systems to make our customers more profitable.
We realised a long time ago that making customers more profitable is the only way we can win business. Of course one of the systems we major with M-Files can and is used throughout business regardless of the type or size. For example we have accountants using M-Files as far away as the Channel Isles, worldwide M-Files is now be used in every industry, it is in many languages and for certain used in parts of the United Nations!
We cannot be all things, to all people and all industries most have their very special ways of doing things even though there are many common factors. One of these industries is the health care industry and especially with all the changes currently underway with the PCTs and generally with the Health Service.
To meet these new special circumstances we have partnered with a local business called helping Health Work. Based at the BIS Park Sunderland. The aims of the business as quoted on their website are
"To meet these new special circumstances we have decided to partner with a local business, Helping Health Work who are experienced ex NHS Senior Managers working in a context where managing and delivering healthcare services now means having to do more with less while continuing to meet high standards and expectations .
Based at the Business Innovation Centre in Sunderland, their aim is to support healthcare businesses to find ways of improving efficiency, maintaining quality and making the best use of increasingly constrained resources.
Helping Health Work have taken M-Files document control system for their own business because they can see its value as an easy to use application. They can also see how it could work in saving time and cost and reducing risk in handling the vast amount of, information and documentation needed to run an effective and sustainable healthcare business."
We look forward to working with Helping Health and reporting back through the blog.
http://www.helpinghealthwork.co.uk/
Posted by John Minto on Sun, Nov 27, 2011
By Mark Snell - Mintronics
John Minto and myself were talking recently with Dr Terry McStae of RTC who is heading up the very successful Design Network North Project. At Mintronics apart from M-Files we have a very nice business supplying CAD/CAM software. So when Terry said there would be a hundred people attending from the Network it seemed as good a place as any to spend a Friday morning even though there were a couple of M-Files quotes waiting to get out.
The key speaker from P&G (Proctor and Gamble) gave a superb talk about networking and how it was a key part of their business model. When he gave a fact that to basically stay in the Top league they are expected to add $4 billion of new sales per year…….. you realise why they employ top academics like Roy. He also identified that some of the ingredients in their products had started with small SME’s.
Then after that the network participants were given the opportunity to give a pitch for 3 minutes. The 15 or so companies covered an amazing array of industries and topics but then it was still 20 minutes to go to the buffet lunch (very nice too). Terry asked did any one like to give a pitch, well I don’t need asking twice, there I was in front of 100 people, with a pitch needed.
Fortunately whilst I was with NEPIC I got the opportunity to attend a course on delivering elevator pitches organised by the Innovation Accelerator Programme run by CPI at Wilton.
At Mintronics we had been discussing ways to bring in phrases such as paperless office, dms, document control, document management software but none of these gave the essence of what we wanted to express.
We had tried one or two things but the metaphor that always seemed to grab people’s imagination and get the message across was the “Bird’s nest analogy”………………..Imagine newly created electronic documents are like newly hatched birds, they are sitting perfectly in their nest, you know what they look like and more importantly where they are……………. Moving on a very short time and they have flown the nest and joined a flock. Now trying to find out what they look like, where they have been is not easy. The way you could do this is to tag the birds before they leave the nest in the case of a document it needs to have meta-tags added. This can be done automatically so tracking them is so easy because it can be carried out anywhere in the world from your computer…….even on the cloud if you want to.
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Then I just asked people please go to our website at www.mintronics.co.uk and download the trial version.
It was amazing over lunch how many people said ah….. the birds nest and document control and management , it appears to be a really good icebreaker.
By Mark Snell