by Steve Earl
I thought I would put on record the events that led up to the forming of EPIX in 1991.
In 1987 I was working as a buyer for a construction company. The directors wanted to grow the business and sought advice from a professor at the Manchester Business School. His diagnosis shook them: “I see the problem – 20th century company, 19th century management!”.
The directors protested and pointed to the accounts system they had purchased five years earlier. This cut no ice with the professor – “throw it away” was his first piece of advice. Then, on a more constructive note he suggested that the company find someone outside of the accounts department, with a data problem, and buy them a desktop computer – to break the mystique.
I was selected as the guinea pig and became the proud owner of an IBM PS/2 Model 30.
This was a big improvement on the IBM PC/XT which had been introduced in 1983 and featured a 3.5” rigid diskette drive instead of the previous 5.25” floppy drive, a 20MB (not GB) hard disk and 640k of RAM (“enough for anyone”, said Bill Gates at the time!).
After much head scratching, I succeeded in writing a purchasing system for myself and my assistant. It resulted in a 50% increase in productivity and a drastic reduction in stress – “at last I can find everything”. And no more six-part carbon copy order forms!
Encouraged by the success of this project, in 1989 the directors decided to look for a better accounting system. They were not impressed by any of the offerings on the market so decided “if we can’t find anything better, let’s write our own”. In 1990 a computer subsidiary was formed and I, along with the company accountant, started work on our own accounting system. A programmer was hired, marketing of the purchasing system commenced, and more computer equipment was purchased – including an IBM P70 “Portable”:
Progress was abruptly halted on 25 January 1991 when the construction company was forced to call in the receivers as a result of problems with their development funders: The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). Roll on four months and I had managed to buy the assets and intellectual property of the software subsidiary…and EPIX Systems Ltd was born.
