To date I have registered my interest in proposals for ESB, Trinity College, The Department of Health, and many more bodies owned by or supported by the taxpayer. Time and time again we are perfectly qualified and experienced to provide the solutions they require. Keep in mind that we have software in power plants, hospitals, and large corporates all over Ireland. However time and time again these tenders have ridiculous criteria that I suspect intentionally favour the usual consulting firms that plague the software industry. A tender for SharePoint “expertise” from Trinity College over the weekend requires a turnover of €250,000 or more in 2009, 2010, and 2011, insurance to the value of over €25,000,000, and a bankers reference. I cannot see what a turnover has to do with financial stability. Eircom has a turnover of €2,600,000,000 and is currently filing for bankruptcy.

So why are these requirements made? I can only surmise that purchasing managers in these state and semi-state organisations have a mutually convenient relationship with large consulting firms. When I go into a business or semi state body I tell them the truth about the risks and the rewards that come from great software development. I expect my clients to take considered and measured risks in an effort to radically improve their business model and workflows. I offer efficiency and value but I expect them to back the project and work with us to drive it to victory. On the path to that victory I will challenge management, change age old processes, upset the apple cart, open numerous cans of worms, and get great results. The suits in a consultancy company don’t work that way. They are only interested in relieving your concerns and assuring you that the sky won’t fall in. The suits in a consultancy company are experts in spotting the cans of worms and putting it inside another can and welding it shut. The suits in a consultancy company couldn’t care less about doing the job properly. The suits in a consultancy company only care about getting taxpayers money and avoiding any possibility that the client will get scared off and delay the project.

So what happens when the suits get the contracts? PPARS happens. €130,000,000 of taxpayers money wasted on a useless hospital information system. How many heads were had for PPARS? Not many (if any?). Why not? Because about €319,999,995 of that money was spent on covering the clients arse and the consultants arse. That is the cozy relationship and that is why you need a €250,000 turnover and €25,000,000 worth of insurance to tender. Not because they matter, but because it ensures that the tender requestor doesn’t have to consider indigenous Irish companies run by renegades like me who value doing things properly over covering my clients arse. I don’t have €25,000,000 worth of insurance because I don’t need it, because €25,000,000 worth of insurance is how much a large consultancy firm needs.

By the way to bill €130,000,000 (the price of PPARS) an average senior software developer in Dublin would have to work for 800 years without a day off, or you could have 400 senior developers for 2 years, or 200 for 4 years. Microsoft have about 40 developers working on Excel to give you an idea.

By the nature of the size of this country all Irish businesses start small and the Irish government is ensuring that if they want to grow they will have to do so elsewhere. In the meantime our tax money is going to KPMG, Accenture, Fujitsu, et el. It is a shame and it is unpatriotic. I believe in the tendering system – it is better than the crony system that would exist otherwise – but it is biased against me right now and the reason is as nefarious as cronyism.

Now that the business lesson is over the smart amongst ye will have realised that these days are a bit like empty hotel rooms – we can either leave them empty and make no money, or we can sell them at a discount and at least break even.

We are offering a fully functional world class e-commerce site with the following benefits…

• Beautiful design by one of our world class designers (see the image below for a sneak preview of the one we are working on right now)
• Full development and customisation by Daniel – one of our most talented Microsoft developers
• Full currency support including automatic currency exchange rate updates from the ECB in real time
• Full VAT support including intra EU VAT trading support
• FREE translation into any EU language (this won’t include your content like product descriptions, but it will include things like “Buy Now” in any language you wish)
• FREE integration with Realex and PayPal and full compliance with PCI regulations as demanded by your merchant account provider
• FREE training in the use and best practices on our e-commerce platform
• FREE support and maintenance for 12 months from go live
• FREE calculation of An-Post and Fastway delivery prices so your customer never pays more than they have to for postage (we believe this is unique to Kro)

See below for a full feature list

We normally retail these sites at €5995 fixed price, but if you order in the next few days we will do a deal for €3995 ex. VAT which is 33% off. You will need to be in a position to start straight away and there is a 50% deposit payable before we begin. We only have one free slot in the schedule so it is first come, first served. Call Ruairi today on 01 4800550 and your site will be live by May.

Our Newest Client

Also all these other features are also included in this offer.

Catalogue Features

•  Unlimited number of products
• Supports categories and manufacturers
• Categories can also be fully nested to any level desired (sub-categories)
• Products can be mapped to more than one category or manufacturer
• Anonymous checkout
• One-page Checkout
• Gift Cards (Virtual and Physical)
• Recurring Products
• Support for kit products (e.g. Build your own computer)
• Multilingual support
• Multicurrency support
• Measure weights, measure dimensions
• Real-time currency exchange rates (ECB)
• SSL support (for secure credit card facilities)
• Export/import (XML, Excel)
• PDF order receipts
• Phone order support
• RMA (return management)
• Configurable list of allowed countries (For billing, For shipping)
• ACL (Access control list)
• Live chat integration
• SMS notifications
• Mini shopping cart
• W3C compliance (XHTML)

Product Features

• Product attributes (e.g. color, size)
• Stock management by product attributes (i.e. colour, size)
• Product tags
• Configurable checkout attributes (such as «Gift Wrap» or «Enter custom message»)
• Configurable customer attributes (such as «Date of birth», «Phone number»)
• Individual prices can be specified for individual customer groups
• Allow customers to enter product price (if enabled)
• Allow store owner to hide prices for non-registered customers
• Supports multiple images per product
• Auto image resizing
• Downloadable products supported
• Downloadable products. License file can be attached
• Downloadable products can have an user agreement
• Downloadable products. Configurable download activation type: ‘When order payment status is Paid’ or ‘Manual activation’
• Text options on products (e.g. require initials for monogram products)
• Support for simple products (e.g. a book) or products with variants
• Support for sale prices
• Product search
• Featured products, sale products or new products
• Inventory tracking
• Disable buy buttons for specific products
• Product specifications (e.g. processor, memory, graphic card)

Marketing & Promos

• Reward Points System
• Supports related products
• Marketing manager (Email campaigns)
• Customer groups can be marked as free shipping
• Customer groups can be marked as tax exempt
• Supports discounts
• Supports coupons
• Discount amount can either be a fixed value or a percent off
• Discounts can be assigned to products
• Discounts can be assigned to categories
• Discounts can be assigned to whole order
• Discounts can be filtered by a customer role
• ‘Had purchased all of these product variants’ discount requirement
• ‘One time only’ discounts
• ‘One time per customer’ discounts
• Discounts can be assigned to shipping fee
• Discount Usage History
• Volume discounts (Tier prices)
• Recently viewed products page
• Free Shipping Option
• Customers can review & rate products (if enabled)
• Require administrator approval of product reviews for all reviews (if enabled)
• Product review helpfulness (“Was this review helpful for you?”)
• Search Engine Friendly URL’s
• Automated URL Re-Writing
• Every product, category and manufacturer page can have their own custom search engine meta tags, page title
• Polls supported
• Store blog supported
• Forums supported
• Supports affiliate programs
• Froogle (google base), PriceGrabber / Yahoo Shopping, become.com product feeds
• Google XML site map
• Customizable email templates
• CMS Topics
• Breadcrumb trail for easy site navigation
• QuickBooks integration
• Google AdSense integration

Shipping Features

• An-Post (Ireland)
• Royal Mail
• UPS
• USPS
• FedEx
• Restrict Available Shipping Methods by Country
• Calculate shipping by order total
• Calculate shipping by order weight
• An-Post shipping (by weight) calculations are already loaded for our Irish customers
• Royal Mail shipping (by weight) calculations are already loaded for our UK customers
• Calculate shipping by country & total order weight
• Several Shipping Rate Computation Methods used Simultaneously (such as, FedEx and UPS)
• Free shipping over €X
• Additional shipping charges by product
• Specify all orders as free shipping
• Admin defined shipping methods (e.g. Ground, Next Day, 2nd Day, etc)
• Specify all orders as free shipping
• Packaging slips
• Support for “no shipping required” products (e.g. services)
• Admin defined shipping methods
• Customer groups can be marked as free shipping
• Shipping tracking number

Payment Features

• Restrict Available Payment Methods by Country
• Cash On Delivery payment method
• Accept Purchase Order
• Accept Cheques / Money Order
• Accept all major credit and debit cards
• Store can be set to authorise only, or auth-capture credit card mode. You can then capture payment at shipment if desired
• Refund (and partial refund) support
• Void support
• Real-time or offline credit card processing
• Manual gateway (just collects order & payment information for offline processing)
• Authorise.NET
• Google Checkout
• Pay in store
• PayPal Standard
• PayPal Website Payments Pro (Direct )
• Purchase order
• Other payment methods

Tax & VAT Features

• Apply tax by country
• Apply tax by U.S. state
• Apply tax by U.S. zip
• Individual products can be marked taxable or tax-exempt
• Tax classes supported by product (e.g. goods, services, alcohol, etc)
• Customer groups can be marked as tax exempt
• The European Union Value Added Tax (EU VAT) support (Company VAT Number)
• Allow store owner to specify which tax based on: billing/shipping/default/shipping origin address
• Allow store owner to specify whether prices include tax
• Allow customer to choose tax display type (incl/excl tax)
• Allow store owner to specify tax display type (incl/excl tax)
• Allow store owner to specify whether shipping is taxable
• Allow store owner to specify whether shipping prices include tax
• Allow store owner to specify whether to hide zero tax

Call Ruairi today on 01 4800550 and your site will be live by May

Our new corporate clients are Unicare & Doc Morris Pharmacies for a SharePoint project and Intuition Financial Services in the IFSC for a custom financial database project. These clients are firmly under the wing (excuse the pun) of our main Kro brand.

We are also pursuing a number of strong opportunities in the healthcare industry for our new modular hospital information system. We’d sincerely like to thank our existing client in this area for their help.

Our new e-commerce clients include SoulLifestyle.ie, Bullseye Food Marketing, Athenry Opticians, and another site that is as yet unnamed. These will all be catered for under our new e-commerce website brand – The Retail Project.

To service these new contracts we intend to take on a new developer on the coming days along with any additional contract resources we may require.

I’d like to thank all our new and existing clients for continuing to place their faith in Kro IT Solutions. As always we will work diligently but with flare and passion to produce the results we promised during sales negotiations.

I don’t know if people wonder why I write these blog posts? If you are wondering the reason is simple – seeing us doing well and closing sales with big name clients gives assurance to potential clients that we are a company they can rely on. Bad companies don’t gain good clients, bad companies don’t grow in a contracting economy, bad companies don’t provide services to household names. We do!

What this means is that Kro IT Solutions can now develop small screen versions of any web applications or websites we create and package them into an app that works natively on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, or Windows 7 phone. Installing the application on your phone is as easy as opening an attachment to an email. We can of course style the app to look like existing apps available on each platform, or we can make it unique to your brand.

If you have a requirement for a phone app feel free to contact us to discuss what we can do to help you. Remember that most of our web applications already work fine on your phone, a native phone app is used when you need offline storage, access to the webcam or GPS features, and other such functionality.

I am excited to announce that after almost 3 years of working hard to find the best e-commerce solution for our clients we are now satisfied that we have a system in place that we can roll out with full gusto and fanfare!

Following the successful launch of three diverse and very well designed e-commerce websites for very valued clients we are now confident that we can provide world class solutions at prices that are attractive in the current Irish economy.

In the last 2 weeks we have taken on two new e-commerce clients whose sites will be launched in the coming months, and from today onwards we will be actively marketing our new e-commerce brand with the eventual hope of attracting 2 to 3 sites per month.

In conjunction with our partners we will also be offering networking, training events, social media workshops, search engine optimisation, accountancy training, and retail excellence training to both new and existing clients.

The new website is at http://theretailproject.com and like all new websites it may contain a few minor browser issues or typos but over time it will mature and hopefully grow into a very valuable resource for the online retail community in Ireland.

Win a Beautiful E-Commerce Website

To celebrate the launch of The Retail Project we will give a voucher for €5995 (the cost of a website with bespoke design and full functionality) to one person who has joined our Linked-In group or become a fan of our Facebook page between now and the end of March. If you follow us on both media you have twice the chance! You could also invite others to join and make them promise to give you the voucher! We will choose the winner at random and the winner will be treated the exact same as a fully paying customer. We will at our own discretion refuse to work on sites that we find distasteful or in any way legally dubious. The judges decision is final.

Click on any of the icons below to follow TheRetailProject on your social media of choice.

The first generation of stores inside Facebook have been total flops, Bloomberg reports.

This is a problem for Facebook because it’s one less business it can “tax” to generate further revenue.

Gamestop, JC Penney, Nordstrom, and Gap have all opened and closed stores in Facebook in the last year.

The stores didn’t lead to significant sales, and people quoted by Bloomberg seem to suggest that a company is better off having a good website for e-commerce than a store inside of Facebook.

Ashley Sheetz, the VP of marketing and strategy at Gamestop tells Bloomberg, “We just didn’t get the return on investment we needed from the Facebook market, so we shut it down pretty quickly … For us, it’s been a way we communicate with customers on deals, not a place to sell.”

Facebook is reportedly looking for a $100 billion valuation when it IPOs. But, its current business doesn’t support that valuation. If you believe it’s going to be worth $100 billion, and eventually much more, you have to believe it’s going to make money from more than just ads.

The theory is that companies will come to depend on Facebook’s huge user base, then Facebook will figure out how to “tax”, or make money off those companies. Zynga, for instance, built a huge business, and then one day Facebook said, give us 30%. In theory, F-commerce, or Facebook Commerce was going to be another taxable business. It isn’t.

Why is f-commerce a flop? Chris Dixon, CEO of Hunch, explains it pretty succinctly on Twitter: “Facebook is like Starbucks where everyone hangs out but no one ever buys anything.”

Now, this is just the first attempt at commerce on Facebook. And it sounds like the big problem is that companies were just replicating what they had on their websites inside of Facebook. There’s still a chance someone will figure out a way to make an e-commerce experience that works in Facebook by tailoring it to Facebook’s strengths.

I borrowed a friends Golf the other day. It is the standard 1.9TDi model that most people own. It is boring, reliable, predictable, comfortable. The only way it could possible kill you would be if you fell asleep behind the wheel. So why do so many people drive Golfs? The reason in my opinion is because VW sell you the GTi, but you buy the 1.9TDi. Corporate behemoths have been using this trick for centuries. The people in steerage on the Titanic (the ones who drowned) probably purchased their ticket after rifling through pages of a brochure showing line drawings of sumptuous dining rooms, violinists (they died too), sun decks, and views of Norwegian Fjords. I’m not saying they thought they would get that, but I bet that it put them in a buying frame of mood. Likewise Irish Rail advertisements show a lady sitting in first class, surrounded by nobody, with her own personal attendant serving her a 3 Michelin star breakfast. That probably happens in the 1^st class carriage of the Belfast Enterprise at 8am on  a Sunday morning in November, but yet it influences our decision to buy a 2^nd class ticket to travel on an unheated overcrowded railcar with a trolley attendant that sells only Kit Kats.

I have worked in a number of corporate jobs in my lifetime. I’ve worked for Microsoft which is about as corporate as it gets in IT. Their recruitment policy works the same as their sales policy. Sell the dream. A quick look at the Microsoft recruitment webpage shows a funky black guy who landed a job with Microsoft because he made a viral video that they noticed. The next box shows a young woman sharing the stage with Bill Ballmer and nonchalantly carries the heading “The making of a tech talk” as if it is an everyday occurrence in Microsoft.  Another image shows a casually dressed lady with the caption “come as you are, do what you love”.  Another says “Come and see what it is like in the cloud”. What a load of crap. Microsoft is a cubicle farm where the chances are you will be given a mundane and mind numbing job. You will spend half your time filling out progress reports and the other half in meetings about the lack of progress. They are selling the GTi and then you are buying the TDi. Sure the GTi exists – there are great jobs in Microsoft, but not outside Seattle, and you need to work 100 hours a week to get one. But like the Golf TDi the day to day job at Microsoft is boring, reliable, predictable, comfortable. You always get paid on time, the food in the canteen is excellent, there is always a parking space, and your chair will be ergonomic.

Kro IT Solutions is a Mk2 GTi. It is fast and furious in here. Everything we do is really well engineered and really well built, but we don’t care if it decapitates you. We are a tiny company that creates huge software applications for power plants and hospitals. We take risks and get thrown sideways out of roundabouts. We pick up penalty points while Golf TDi drivers shake their heads at us in despair and knowingly say to their wives “they won’t get there any faster”. When we put our foot to the floor vans get taken off the road and tarmac crumples. The bad stuff is all there as well. We break down more often than a TDi, we use a lot more energy, we sometimes miss payday (yes there have been times when our developers didn’t get paid on time), our chairs are not the most comfortable, and we fade in the sunlight.

If you want a GTi career then call us today. We are currently looking for a world class CSS/HTML5 developer and if you can design then all the better (but we are sceptical that great all-rounders really exist – have you ever seen a GTi with a towbar?). To apply please send us a brief CV and a link to one website you have designed or worked on. We will be looking at the HTML and the CSS so make sure they are clean and documented. We will look at it in FF10 on Windows 7. This is a junior position and you will be working with .Net C# MVC, however no experience is required in those as we will bring you up to speed over time. You will get to work with 3 experienced developers who are all passionate about big thinking and the latest technologies. We value training and development – 2 of us are heading to London next month for a week of training in MVC and later in March we are going to Birmingham for an e-commerce workshop.

Kro IT Solutions is not for everyone. You need to be very self-driven and eager to exceed expectations. You need to be a perfectionist in your work. We don’t work overtime generally – we like having a life. We work smart and we work efficient. You need to be passionate about what you do, but unlike in Microsoft you don’t need to prove you are passionate by acting like a monkey on speed. We’re happy with miserable looking gits who somehow still manage to turn out great code.

Our contact details are here.

This is an office based job for people who are allowed to work in Ireland and have the appropriate visa. We welcome applications from all talented people regardless of age, gender, race, nationality, etc. Hiring date asap.

St. Michael’s in Dun Laoghaire who have long been one of our best clients are taking delivery of this new system over the coming weeks and we will be working with them to integrate it with their existing laboratory and medical systems.

The new software works on a lease based pricing system where hospitals pay a monthly fee for the use of each module they require. This means smaller hospitals with less departments pay significantly less for the product.

We have soft launched a new website for the software at http://krohis.com/. We will be updating and adding to this website over the coming months.

I’d like to thank St. Michael’s Hospital for their support and encouragement over the last two years. I’d also like to sincerely thank our development team over that period for all your hard work and dedication to this project. Like everything we do this project was developed in-house in Ireland and we counted on technology, workmanship, and efficiency to keep the project on budget rather than low cost labour rates in the third world.

Opportunity

We are now actively looking for sales reps who have an existing relationship with hospitals to help us gain a foothold in the market. This could be complimentary to your existing work and the commission paid for a sale will be above industry norms. We are especially interested in sales people with a knowledge of the EMEA area and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa.

We are also looking for investors, partners, or agents who may be interested in working with us on rolling out this new system to new clients. We are happy to meet with relevant parties to demonstrate the system in detail and to share the roadmap for future development.

We don’t negotiate on rates as they are based on costs. Our costs are mostly top quality staff, training of the same staff, and a very modest office in which to put the staff. There is nowhere there to cut costs except maybe hiring lower quality staff (been there, did that, wasn’t happy).

We don’t negotiate on margin as I feel I have a right to make some money. Being in business is risky and for that risk you expect a reward.

That leaves time. To reduce the price of a quotation we would have to reduce the time we spend working on the clients project. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that spending less time on a project will mean cutting corners and reducing quality. We don’t do that because we are always competing against ourselves to make each project better than the last. We can’t do that if we short change ourselves on time.

Many a canny business person will read this and say “oh c’mon – do what we all do – add 20% for the negotiation”. I don’t and won’t do that. Why not? Because the polite and proud person who accepts me as a honest and decent businessman and therefore wouldn’t demean me by asking me to discount my time and skills is my ideal client. If I was having to shaft my ideal clients and give the chancers a 20% discount then I’d not be happy in business.

I had a conversation with a client last year where we were about €500 above the cost of a competitor on a €20k project. I refused to lower our quotation and the client eventually informed us that we lost the contract because “we were just not hungry enough”. I had to think about this one for a while. It annoyed me. I am a seriously hungry businessman – ambitious, tenacious, eager. However I am not hungry for money or the thrill of a sale. I am hungry for quality, workmanship, return on investment for my clients, doing a great job, doing the right job. A year later I noticed that particular website had gone live. I genuinely stopped in my tracks for a second and felt sorry for the guy who had purchased it. He was robbed. It is a shambles. Cheap design, nasty looking, inelegant, and I would strongly guess not making as much money as it could.

Of course sometimes we lose because we are not as good as a more expensive competitor, or we can’t offer what a more expensive competitor can offer. In those cases more often than not I look at the finished product a few months later and I think “wow – we need to up our game”.

People talk about a race to the bottom. I can’t think of a race I would rather lose.

Usually one of three types of people gives advice on SEO:

1. The backroom web developer who churns out the usual rubbish about keywords, meta-tags, and leaving comments on blogs.
2. The website owner who is number 1 on Google for phrases like “Tropical Fish in Termonfeckin” who thinks they are an expert and that SEO is easy.
3. The search engine optimisation geeks with their algorithms and white hat black hat pseudo-science bullshit will jump down my throat no matter what I say here today. Those guys remind me of that robot thing in Star Trek who speaks impossible rubbish in every episode while all the Trekkers or whatever they call themselves get all wide eyed and horny taking in his every word about multiplexing unidimensional transmogrificating interdimensional halogen carbon based power stacks. I’m sorry guys but I have a degree in Computing Science and I am not fooled.

I am none of the above so it is hardly any wonder it is not a subject I blog about. However recently a gentleman phoned me asking me for technical advice on Xero (an accounting product we both use and develop a small tool for). He mentioned during the call that he had come across us a week or two earlier in relation to cloud computing development and wanted to speak to us about that also. I finished the call with this man and the phone rang again. It was a company in Dublin looking for a custom database for their business. I asked them where they found our name and they said their IT department had done some Google searches and found us all over the web in relation to the particular subject area. I finished that call and received a third call in almost as many minutes which started with the words “I just found you on Google….”. I must be doing something right. However I am only doing one thing and that is what this blog post will be about. However before I waste your time let me tell you that the one thing I do is not called SEO, nor is it scientific, nor do I read Matt Cutts blog (life is way too short), and if you ask me about white hats and black hats I’ll probably give you my most evil look of scorn before telling you to eff off and watch Star Trek or something.

What I do is simple. I write content designed for my customers and potential customers. I start by picturing the client I am trying to talk to. In my head it is usually a 30-50 something, IT savvy, business or technical manager in a company of at least 50 employees. That is not to say I will try and alienate younger people, older people, or small business owners. They are perfectly good clients, but I can’t speak to all of them because it is too much to consider. So I pick one imaginary client and speak to him or her.

I write clear and concise informative paragraphs that explain to this person what we do and why s/he should use our services. I then place this content in a simple website with no Flash, minimal Javascript, small neat images, easy to read font colours and sizes, and a simple navigation system. Then I press “upload to web”.

Once that has happened I wait about 6-8 weeks and if we haven’t had a call I take the content back down and replace it with something else. I also keep my company LinkedIn Profile up to date, I write one or two blog posts to support the content, and if I spot the opportunity I may leave a link or two elsewhere around the internet. I don’t go mad though – I am too busy.

After 3 years of doing this we are generating a top 5 position on Google for almost all our services, we get about 30 calls a month from web searches (I don’t know how that compares to other software companies, but it keeps us busy), and very very often I meet total strangers who work in related industries and they say “Ah Kro, yeah – ye are a big company right?”. Wrong, but we are trashing big companies arses on Google. Why? I really don’t know but I suspect it is because they play the SEO game instead of writing content for their clients (or perhaps they do nothing).

So what do I say to my clients? I say build a nice website, put lots of good well written content in it, give it 8 weeks, and then if you are not ranking well on Google call these guys and take it to the next level. I don’t know how well my client sites are doing on Google or if they take my advice. I’ve always been of the opinion that SEO is not part of our service, any more than selling groceries and designer handbags is part of the job of the construction company that build Dundrum Town Centre. We build great websites that have the potential to sell lots of products. It is up to the website owner to find specialist help in realising that potential.