Greentree gains from switch to Jade

By Adam Gifford

Greentree International, formerly Focus Software, has released the first financial software suite written in the New Zealand-developed Jade tool set.

The company started developing Greentree in January 1998 as a Windows-based alternative to its DOS-based CBA accounting software, which is used by more than 3500 companies locally and in Australia.

The first beta site, Universal Homes in Auckland, went live last December 1.

There are now 27 sites running Greentree financials and 40 other sites implementing or evaluating it.

Beta testing of the distribution modules is just starting.

Managing director Don Bowman says his team started developing the product in Delphi to run on a Microsoft SQL Server database, before switching to Jade after hearing about it by chance.

"One of the good things about developing in Jade is being involved with Cardinal [Jade's Christchurch-based creator].

"I know we would not have been able to get the same response from Microsoft or many of the other main providers of software," he says.

Because Jade is a pure object-oriented system, changes to applications mean just changing or introducing one bit of code, rather than having to rewrite multiple blocks of code.

"The big gains down the track will be in maintenance of the product. If software costs $100 to develop, every year it costs you $100 to maintain it," Mr Bowman says.

"If you can save 20 per cent on that a year, there's some big money over 10 years."

Greentree runs on a Microsoft NT Server with Windows 95, 98 or NT workstations, using a Jade database to store, analyse and report information.

The software is aimed higher than CBA as a second-tier enterprise product, up against the likes of Great Plains, Solomon, Platinum and Navision.

It is also coming up against applications such as SAP and PeopleSoft, which are designed for medium-sized companies.

Mr Bowman wonders why companies go for large-scale applications that cost several hundred thousand dollars to buy and install, when Greentree costs from $10,000 for a smaller system to about $100,000 for a large installation.

He says the Tourism Board, formerly a CBA site, bought SAP at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.

"They could have got a licence from us to run Greentree with a Jade thin client to give access to overseas posts, but they've probably got people in their organisation who want to have SAP on their CVs."

Greentree will be sold through accounting firms and vertical-solution providers in Australia and New Zealand. Some 80 dealers are already signed up.

It is also suited for the fast-developing ASP (application service provider) market, where it can be rented by users and accessed over the internet, because Jade's thin-client technology allows any Jade application to be accessed remotely without the limitations of conventional browsers.

"What we set out to do with Greentree was deliver a product in the Windows environment with the same depth and breadth functionality as CBA," says director Vlad Kozak, who is responsible for New Zealand sales.

"The dealers said if all we did was deliver CBA in Windows they would be happy. We think we have done more."

A feature is the ability to do financial reporting in Excel, "because our research told us that's what accountants feel comfortable with."

"What we have done is we can expose Jade objects as Com objects, so straight away if you are working in Visual Basic or C++, or Delphi, you can bring up the Com interface and post transactions into our systems.

"The advantage, particularly with financials, is no one will run business just with financials. They will have some other feeder system.

"By posting directly into the application, they don't risk the integrity of the data by having to rekey information into another system," Mr Kozak says.

Director Richard Jones, who is responsible for Australian sales, says there is already interest in Greentree from CBA customers, as well as from companies running legacy applications or even other Windows packages.

"A lot of Windows products are really DOS products with a Windows front end, which we call a pig with lipstick.

"They go so far, but when you start getting into e-commerce and thin-client issues, they fall over. They don't have the grunt."

He says the Jade thin-client technology will create huge savings for companies that operate many remote sites.

Mr Bowman says the next year will involve adding modules, getting both Greentree and CBA ready for the introduction of GST in Australia, and seeing how the applications market opens up once companies come through Y2K.