Rebate management blog - Page 27 - Enable

Enable Tech is a column on design and technology by David Hunt. David has been our operations director from the very start, and has lead the evolution of Enable into one of the most respected and high-quality software development businesses around. David has an uncompromising passion for design, quality and excellence.

An interesting job we tackled as part of our office move was evaluating different telephone systems for the new building.

Enable has for many years used what might charitably be described as a ’standard’ office telephone system.

Low-tech phones were connected by ethernet cable (from which they drew power) to a central server. The server was connected to another mysterious piece of hardware, itself hooked up to the good old BT infrastructure.

Using the telephone was not easy. Setting up speed dial keys was an unintuitive process. Checking your missed calls could be confusing. And organizing a conference call was such a complex operation that specialist one-on-one training would be required first.

More positive aspects of the system were favourable call quality and rock-solid reliability. Truth is, it served us well for many years.

7 min read

Enable Tech is a column on design and technology by David Hunt. David has been our operations director from the very start, and has lead the evolution of Enable into one of the most respected and high-quality software development businesses around. David has an uncompromising passion for design, quality and excellence.

On Monday, Matt will arrive at his desk to confront a 315 page document. It describes the precise inner workings of a mission-critical software solution. It sounds pretty complicated.

But the software doesn’t exist yet.

In three months, Matt and his team will race from zero lines of code to tens of thousands. The end result will be rolled out to hundreds of users, who will rely on it every day. It’ll be delivered on time, on budget — and if it’s not the best piece of software our company has ever created, we’ll be disappointed.

It’s OK, Matt has done this before.

7 min read

A recent visit to Silicon Valley in California by the Directors of Enable in Stratford-upon-Avon has inspired the firm to design their new headquarters along the lines of global giants Google and Intel.

Entrepreneurs Denys Shortt and Andrew Butt have invested over £1 million in the new Enable Headquarters at The Courtyard on Timothy’s Bridge Road. The pair started Enable in a stable block in Buckland near Broadway in 2000 and now the company employs 30 people with sales of £2m per annum — a wonderful start-up to success story.

What is most remarkable is that Andrew was just 16 when Enable began and Denys made him the Managing Director — one of the youngest to hold this position ever in the UK.

The offices have been designed by Enable’s Operations Director, David Hunt, whose talents far exceed just running his software team. David, who also project managed the fit-out of the premises, said “My goal for this project was to create an environment that not only reflected Enable’s values but also reinforced them; As our staff and clients spend time in this space they will notice the attention to detail, the consistency, the quality of what’s around them and will be reminded of what Enable is all about.”

3 min read

Enable Tech is a column on design and technology by David Hunt. David has been our operations director from the very start, and has lead the evolution of Enable into one of the most respected and high-quality software development businesses around. David has an uncompromising passion for design, quality and excellence.

Last week, we launched a new subsidiary business focused on rebate management. Our software solution helps organizations manage complex trading agreements involving retrospective payments, such as rebates, retrospective discounts, royalties, purchase income and back margin.

In this article, I’ll guide you through some of the more interesting techniques used by the website we built for our new product.

1. SVG graphics

Almost every image on our website is delivered in SVG format. SVG has been around for a long time, but browser support is only now nearing a level where SVG can be considered a worthwhile option. As someone who is enthusiastic about design, SVG has some upsides that excite me.

1. High resolution displays are going mainstream: products such as the Apple iPhone 4, third generation iPad, Retina MacBook Pro, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Nokia Lumia 920 have introduced displays to the marketplace that are capable of displaying 250 to 350 pixels per inch. Artwork designed for conventional computer displays looks blurry on these devices. SVG is a vector image format and therefore images authored in this format look beautifully sharp not only on these new high-DPI devices but on older displays too.
2. Editing tools such as Adobe Illustrator allow SVG to be edited natively. There is no need to hold a “master” version of your website artwork in addition to an exported “published” version. An SVG file can be opened directly, edited and saved. It’s a slick workflow.
3. SVG is based on XML. It is therefore dead easy to create SVG output programatically. For example, a status icon that needed to be colored red in some cases and green in others would typically require two separate versions of the same image. With SVG you could create a single version and alter a color attribute on the fly — driven by your application’s business logic.

9 min read

Stratford-upon-Avon based software company Enable has today launched a new subsidiary focused on rebate management. It has been created by entrepreneurs Denys Shortt (who also owns DCS Group) and Andrew Butt who have combined forces with fellow directors David Hunt, Andy James and Dan Wood.

The new initiative will be located in the new £1 million Enable headquarters in Timothy’s Bridge Road and will create up to 5 new jobs over the coming year.

Enable creates web based software that simplifies business-to-business trading, unlocks hidden revenue and maximizes profit in trading agreements.

Why we’re focusing on rebate management

For over a decade, Enable has helped distributors, wholesalers and buying groups manage the income they receive from suppliers and customers. Denys and Andrew have identified a key area where businesses are continually throwing away hard earned revenue.

Denys Shortt comments: “I am delighted to be announcing our new rebate management product — an exciting new business created in tough economic times. We have found a niche here. Enable will transform how companies manage their business deals and help them lock down profits. It has been tried and tested.”

3 min read

Stratford-upon-Avon based software development company Enable has made a £1 million investment into 7,000 sq ft of new freehold offices in the Stratford-upon-Avon Enterprise Park.

The Managing Director and 29 year old award-winning young entrepreneur Andrew Butt commented “This is a milestone for Enable—it is our first freehold headquarters! We see it as an investment for the future and key to our plans for continued growth.”

Denys Shortt, CEO of Enable commented “Enable is expanding and will have its best year in history this year. We are winning orders from big firms and employing locally with graduates from Warwick University.” He continues “We are also delighted to have had several banks offering us funding for our growth—a good sign that the banks are lending.”

Denys Shortt started Enable Software in 2000 with 16 year old Andrew Butt who he made the Managing Director. Since then Enable has grown to almost £2m sales and now has 24 employees.

1 min read

Directors of Enable have recently returned from a Study Tour to Silicon Valley. Organized and run by Mike and Linda Portlock of E-Vision Consulting Ltd, the focus of the Tour was �Transformative Technologies for Business IT�, exploring how emerging technologies can be deployed to help organizations build a better future.

The 2012 visit was the 16th annual IT Directors Study Tour organized by E-Vision Consulting, and was full of fascinating insight. We live in an age where empowering technologies are increasingly available first to individuals rather than to enterprises and institutions. Employees and customers are getting the good stuff first and this is increasing pressure on IT leaders.

Those involved in IT are used to rapid change but harsh economic conditions combined with new consumer focused technologies, such as mobile, social media and cloud, have created a new environment with fresh challenges for both IT and the business. It is inevitable that groundswell technologies will continue to shift information power to customers and employees. IT leaders must shift their mindsets for a world where technology projects can come from anywhere and IT is a key advisor, not necessarily the manager, on those projects. This power shift cannot be stopped, but IT leaders can take advantage of it.

3 min read

As a result of continued demand for Enable’s software development service, and consistent revenue growth, Enable will be exhibiting at two key events at Warwick University in May.

The first is the Warwick Summer Careers Fair on Tuesday 8th May. Organized by the Employer Connect team at Warwick, this event connects employers with students expecting to graduate imminently. Enable’s Managing Director, Andrew Butt, and Operations Director, David Hunt, will be attending.

The second event, also organized by Warwick’s Employer Connect, is a PhD network event on Thursday 10th May. Enable is privileged to be able to access this unique opportunity and discuss some specialist roles available to PhD graduates. This event will be attended by David Hunt and Dan Wood, an existing PhD graduate.

David Hunt commented "Enable is focussed on recruiting top talent. We recognise that in order to achieve this it’s about pitching ’the Enable difference’ to candidates and attracting people with a shared vision and values."

Enable is a keen supporter of promoting from within, and has successfully recruited, trained and developed many graduates over the past few years.

1 min read