Q: John, you live 'across the pond' as they say. Quite a ways from the headquarters of Alpha Software in Burlington, MA USA. Can you tell us a little about where you live and the business climate in your area?

A: I live in Greenock, a middle sized town for here of about 60K. The area is known as Inverclyde and is made up of about 10 other smaller towns and villages giving the population at about 100K. Greenock is built on the river Clyde on the West Coast of Scotland and is most famous for its ship building. We are situated about 24 miles west of Glasgow the main city in Central Belt Scotland. Central Belt is very densely populated and because the area is rather hilly most of the population lives in a narrow valley from here to the East Coast which is known as Silicon Glen, due to high number of Microprocessor type industries in Scotland (our Silicon Valley).

Greenock's old industries, the ship building, ship's engines, steering equipment, sugar refining and many more heavy industrial type employers have all but disappeared now leaving the area as an unemployment "black spot". Where the shipyards once stood and employed 15K people new offices and call centers now rule employing less than 1500 people. All the support industries that depended on the big employers followed the same path and they too have all but vanished, a further 15K jobs lost. All this decline happened in very short space of time and a few smaller businesses, who were slimmer and fitter managed to ride out the storm and have survived, myself being one of the survivors. Now the area has split into two communities, "the haves" and "the have not". Things have bottomed out and now there is light at the end of the tunnel. Those in work are spending and tragically those who are unemployed get poorer.

Q: I understand you run a family business originally started by your father. Can you give us a little history of your company?

A: The business was started in 1947 and incorporated in 1950. My father was "demobed" from the Royal Air Force with £250 for his 8 years service to King and Country after WWII. Armed with his £250 and his business partner's same £250 for similar service to the country, they went into the clothing trade. They had both been window dressers with a large European retail group known as C&A. At this time after the war in the UK everything was in short supply and you required a ration book to purchase most things. So as a consequence of this it was easy to sell just about anything as people were desperate to shake off the dark days of the war.

Business prospered and soon there were 14 shops all trading nicely and a good living was being had. In the early sixties Jimmy, my father's business partner, decided he was content with his lot and no longer wished to expand so they split up carving out two equal shares and with a hand shake went their separate ways. The sixties were good times in the UK and Dad decided to diversify into many different businesses but critically he started to build a small property empire and a dress wear hire service. It was these two developments that allowed him to ride out the turbulent times of the crash of 1973 when oil prices went high and the UK slipped into depression.

He cut back, shed branches and unfortunately staff. Where once he employed 75 people we slipped gradually back with the recession to about 15 employees. However, he held on to all the commercial property and houses that he had purchased and started to develop a property rental business. In the retail we repackaged things developed new markets, responding to the changing shopping patterns of the public to where we are now a thriving business developing new opportunities in the highland trade and dress wear hire market.

Q: John, for us yanks, can you explain what the 'highland trade and dress wear hire market' entails?

A: The highland trade for us falls into two camps, the sale of an outfit and the hire of an outfit. For a sale it's a simple enough process of measure up the customer, show them the cloths they want to see and place the orders with the various manufacturers. The hire of an outfit is almost the same process except all the stock is on the premises but most importantly you have to track exactly minute by minute customer by customer your stock. Our stock control is what I describe as totally dynamic. Try to imagine this scenario. You have a finite amount of stock. In our case very large. Customer comes in books a range of items typically 11 of, needs to collect on a date at a time; we need returned on a date before a time. Next customer needs basically same stuff in a time scale that overlaps. Now do that 5000 times a year. If you think it sounds easy think of it this way. You go into the tool hire shop and you order a 750W Black and Decker Drill to be collected in seven days time and returned the following day. You turn up and they have a 600W Bosh drill waiting for you, it still can drill a hole, not the end of the world. Essentially the guy who hires the drill is actually in the market for a hole. The drill is only a means to an end. Now my customer wants a particular waist with a particular length in a particular tartan for his wedding day. There are many jacket styles in different sizes and lengths, different sporrans, belts, socks size and colour; in total about 11 very variable items. You have got to get it right, no mistakes accepted. This guy really only wants a bride but he wants to look his best in an outfit he probably can't afford to buy so I supply it to him at a cost he can afford and he looks like a million dollars. He'll be in pictures, videos, and memories, second best won't do.

Dress wear is the same idea but it's much simpler, as outfits consist of two/three items and colour tends to be black. The same tracking of the stock is required but it's much easier due to lack of variety and colour.

Q: You are trained as an Electrical/Electronic Engineer, is that right?

A: Yes. I went into industry as most did in this area and was very lucky to get a job with a contracting electrical engineering firm. I spent most of my time seconded to Tate & Lyle but not the sugar side of things. I was working with a division of Tate & Lyle that had a Research and Development department and by showing an interest in early computers (Commodore PETs and the like) a manager there encouraged me and I got interested in the data bases of the day. When I look back, they were pretty basic things. We were setting up small net works, tinkering around inside the computers when the IBM PCs appeared on the market. This was heaven to people like me. The company were allowing me to fool around with IBM 8086 and 286 machines. £3000 a go, what more could you ask for. Here was me 25 years old and the only person in the place who understood PCs. Not only could I fix them I knew how to load them up. Well I was held in high regard by my bosses who were all frightened of them. All they could see was their jobs being taken over by PCs. Meanwhile I'm getting busier and busier; I've been made up to head of maintenance, over seeing all electrical installations and repairs. Superb!

Q: Do you see your training as helping you with your work with Alpha Five?

A: Yes I do. On the first PET we had at T&L there was a simple flat data base and I realized that all the Electrical Distribution Systems for the factory could be put on to this. Everybody else who was working with the computers was totally taken by spread sheets and word processors, they were familiar concepts: calculator and type writer. So now when things started to go wrong I could quickly retrieve what Distribution Board to go to and start looking for faults from this point forward. It soon followed that just about everything that we had been tracking by pen and paper could be put on to the computer and I was the one elected to do it. I opted for a relational data base that, to be perfectly honest, I was not at all sure how to use. But it had a good manual and after a few attempts it all started to come together. This data base by today's standards was crude but it worked and I had managed to master it really well. What you've got to remember here is that all my PC knowledge is self taught at T&L's expense. They were happy. I was getting through the work and they were not having to employ anyone else, great arrangement. My employer, the Electrical Engineers, they can't believe their luck. I'm permanently working for T&L, and they were getting a fat fee every month.

Q: Can you tell us the name of the relational database that you used at T&L?

A: I started off using Sage Retrieve 3. This was a DOS program and extremely easy to use. It was run from a floppy drive. I think it was a 320K format. Up until this point I had been using a bundled flat file with a maximum of 32 fields spread across two screens. I use the term screen in the way we would use form in today's Alpha environment. So here am I now sitting with a relational data base which is capable of having ten screens open at once and all talking to each other. Amazing! Number driven menus to open your application, it looked like you were a true programmer to the "in the dark managers I had" but if I had thought about it at the time, these guys were suits, they hadn't a clue about my "hands on" maintenance work. If my manager, whose initials just happened to be "JR", said "jump" I replied "how high". It was a relationship that worked well. He trusted me to get the normal every day stuff done, keep the factory producing. The production line was at that time (mid to late 80s) was £500.00 a minute. And the rest of the time I could develop my data base.

Q: When did you first run into Alpha Software's database products?

A: My first encounter with Alpha was back in 1994/95. I remember Windows 3.1 was the GUI of the day and I had spotted Alpha Five version 1 in a UK PC magazine. It was being bench tested against MS Access, version 2 I think, and the review was very favorable to Alpha Five.

I was, by this time, in the business and had been using the same relational data base that I had used while at T&L. It was starting to have limitations for what I was trying to do so I was in the market for something better. Alpha was purchased based solely on what I had read in a magazine.

Q: What version of Alpha Five are you now using John?

A: On my main PC I have version 5 which I am presently developing my version 5 app before I purchase the runtime. And I presently distribute to my customers my app with the version 4 runtime, however, they know something very different and more powerful is on its way.

Q: What intrigued me about your use of Alpha Five, is that your main use is to allow your customers to more effectively do business with your company. My guess is you love to give away your application! Tell us about this.

A: Well, what I had was one PC running Alpha Five and all the work was coming through this and I had a bit of a bottle neck with all the users trying to make our own domestic bookings plus third party bookings. These bookings come in by phone, fax, and post. Not too many people had email here at this time and I was constantly harking on to people to get online and simplify things.

Anyway, version 3 is what I was using and I was discovering the delights of Action Scripting. Although version 2 was easier to use than version 1 it was not as powerful, the button genie lacked that multiple tasks capability. So when version 4 came along and a runtime to compliment it, all the PCs could now have Alpha Five on them with my PC doing the development and all the others on a simple network. It was then that I thought- "What if external users could use the dial up server facility of Windows?" "Hey presto" it all fell into place. All I had to do was convince people who maybe had never used a PC that this was going to revolutionize the way we did business together. Some customers all ready had PCs but they were only using them for letters, show cards, and notices. Just the sort of thing the adverts tell you you can do with your Desk Top Publisher. My problem was a lot of people were resistive to me supplying my software to track their business. So what I did was, I threw in a small accounts package and another app that I had created for making window display price tickets and show cards that utilized the labeling feature of Alpha Five to its maximum. This was the key that opened the doors. Suddenly they could enter their information once and get back as many copies as they wanted of tickets and show cards all centered with easy to cut out lines as a border. Tragic, I'm offering state of the art stock control and simple Desk Top Publishing is the selling feature. If that's what it took then that's what I was going to supply. Eventually people started using the bit I was trying to promote and it's gone from strength to strength. For further encouragement I supplied the software free. I even supplied PCs that I would assemble and the shops could purchase or rent them.

Q: So your retail customers dial into your computer and place their own orders directly on your system. Is that correct? Or do they dial in and upload records which you then enter locally?

A: What happens is my trade customers have a runtime on a remote PC each with a complete stock table. They dial in and query my orders taken table. The result is subtracted from their stock table and then the new order is appended to my orders table. This way I have no interaction with the data. This is a simplified explanation of what's happening.

Q: Have you seen productivity and sales gains with this business model?

A: Productivity has improved because now we have no direct interaction with the customer and sales have improved because people can trade with whom they like at the end of the day. So, if you trade with me you do it easily on screen; if you trade with others you get on the phone and talk or fax or write. The customer has the choice.

Q: How do your clients like using your application?

A: I have had a good reaction. It's easy to use, but most importantly it was written by a small family business for other small family business to use, so its not daunting. It considers that the end user may not be entirely comfortable with computers. You could say it has a humanizing quality about it.

Q: Tell us why you settled on Alpha Five as your tool of choice of this task.

A: When I originally purchased Alpha Five, it was based on a PC magazine bench test. Once I became familiar with it I thought - lets have a look at other packages. I had been using a DOS based relational package that was fairly powerful but extremely easy to use. Alpha was much more powerful and not much harder to use so I wondered if that followed with all Windows based data bases. All the Windows word processors I had tried were easier than DOS ones so surely it would be the same for data bases. Not a bit of it. I was shocked at how difficult the major players in this field were to use. I stopped trying other packages when I was unable to easily automatically capitalize the first word of a simple name field. Actually I don't know if it was possible at that time. This spoke volumes to me about Alpha. Whether you were a complete beginner or a seasoned user you could get excellent results very quickly. Now I'm very much still at the learning stage but with the use of the Alpha Software message board and thumbing the manuals I can get the job done.

Q: Do your customers suggest changes and upgrades to your application, or is this totally driven from your end?

A: Yes. It's a constant evolution of the software. Ideas come from both ends and together we will improve and tweak things for the mutual benefit of all users.

Q: How do you support and maintain the application? Do you do this yourself or do you have others in your company that do this?

A: I do it myself. I will personally go out to an installation and setup all the necessary hardware and software. This can be time consuming but the end result is a system that works well. Remember, most of the people I deal with are non technical. They have a lot of get up and go and are prepared to put the time into their business but some things they want to leave to somebody else, and its all free. Support is at present done by distributing CDs around to all users. Once I get my WEB page back up and running I hope to offer downloadable software. I have enlisted a WEB designer, who just happens to be a friend, to give me that professional look that no matter how hard I try I can't quite achieve. And what's really good, he's doing it for the price of a top quality kilt. You scratch my back I'll scratch yours as they say.

Q: Do you use Alpha Five for any other purposes within your business?

A: Yes I do. I have a fairly large property portfolio for a small business. I track all my rents using Alpha Five and I have designed an accounts system that my accountant has loaded on his system so all I have to do is email my records to him and he produces my books as required.

Q: John, Alpha Five version 5 was released this past summer. Have you had time to check out some of the new features, and if so, which ones are you most excited about?

A: Well. I had two main reasons for buying version 5. I am dyslexic so having a spell checker is a god send to me. And the email feature will allow me to greatly develop my runtime package. There are so many great features I honestly believe that this should have been called Alpha 6 version 1. I now feel I am in total control of the application. What I have achieved with version 5 with the new action scripting was completely beyond me in version 4/4.5. I am only starting to experiment with Xbasic so I rely heavily on Action Scripting for my automation.

Q: John, can you tell us a little about Scotland? In my mind it conjures up rolling green hills with quaint cottages dotting the landscape.

A: To a lot of people Scotland is the biscuit tin picture of rolling hills and picturesque scenery and vast tracks of our small country is just that. However, where I live in Central Belt its urban conurbation running into the next urban conurbation. The population of Scotland is 5.5 million and more than half live in a strip about 50 miles wide and 90 miles long hence the term Central Belt. The climate here has few extremes. We get long summers not necessarily warm and dry and dark winters again not overly cold. During the summer it doesn't get dark where I stay and you can easily bar-b-q into the early hours of the morning with no lights needed. Conversely in the winter it's in to work in darkness and home in darkness.

Q: When you are not working with your company or Alpha Five, what do you do for relaxation?

A: When you've got four beautiful children and a beautiful wife at home all I want to do is spend my time with them. My boys like to go to the park and we play football. Or we get the bikes out and cycle into the country which is only minutes from my house as we live in a small village. The latest edition to the family is my only daughter and she's just 5 ½ months old so a lot of time is spent gazing in wonderment at her. I'm so lucky to have three boys and now a girl. We go out a lot as a family as I spend a lot of time working so I think its important to give as much back as possible to make up for the times when I'm working. For instance. In December I work seven days a week till Christmas and the same at New Year. However, come January I'll take time off, go in late and go home early. To put it bluntly I do nothing on my own. The family is number 1B and the business is number 1A. That's 1 BEFORE all other things and 1 AFTER the family. I have always kept that as my motto in business. What's the point of being rich in material things if you're poor in family and love?

Well said John.