While it’s all fun and games reviewing cute apps for the Mac, there is a strong push of powerful applications designed for business. We’ve been looking at a bunch of these professional applications, trying to figure them out with our non-business minds, and employing them in real-world scenarios to give you an idea as to what exactly software on the Mac is capable of. I don’t expect the large majority of our readers will be interesting in such applications, but it’s an important aspect of Mac software nonetheless. First up, Distribute by Seven Lakes Software, an Enterprise Resources Planning software.

•••

We’ve been testing this app for more than two months now, through the beta, in a real world scenario. I got the manager of a bookstore/warehouse—prefers to stay anonymous—to give the app a run, and see whether it fits into their workflow.

What can you tell us about your business, workflow, and what you would want your software to be capable of?
We’re a bookstore warehouse, with a front-end as well as backend ordering. We gather supplies from publishes, and act as a distributor for front-end stores. This means we deal with suppliers, a large catalog of current books, with a fairly variable stock for each book, regular bookhouses, local and overseas, as well as direct customer sales. We would need our software to manage all of this.

To give you a little background of where we come from, we’ve been using a customised Fox Pro database on a DOS machine, but have been looking to upgrade our entire system. And we were looking for something on the Mac platform.

That’s great. So how did Distribute perform at filling in those requirements?

Very nicely really. Distribute is one of the most complete ERP software I’ve seen on any platform. Most companies use customised software to get the job done, but Distribute was very powerful, flexible, and feature rich.

Can you walk me through a workflow?
Sure. There is some confusion as to which is the first logical step in the setup, as every item is cross linked to another item. I chose to start by adding contacts. These contacts can be used everywhere from suppliers to customers, so just have to keep adding them in. Sadly there was no way to import contacts from Address Book or an Excel spreadsheet.

Next, we added suppliers. Each supplier is given a number, and you can add contacts to that supplier. It’s not necessary to add contacts to suppliers, as they can exist on their own right, but it helps in the long run. It’s a little difficult to grasp at first, and the manual comes in handy at those times. Once we were done with suppliers, we added warehouses. Actually we have only one warehouse, but one needs to set up a warehouse to maintain stock for the books.

Finally, we added Articles—books—to our database. The articles are well defined, as you can enter different price points for different shipping zones, suppliers, warehouses, rebates, etc. To add stock levels for the books one has to go into the warehouse and add stock. All of this seems tedious to start with as things are not in one place, but if you look at the long run it’s much more streamlined and makes more sense.

The set up is the most crucial and difficult to grasp aspect of Distribute, as there is some trial and error involved. There’s also a lot of different customisations for each data type, much of which we didn’t require, but it’s there. I suppose that’s the price you pay for power versus ease of use.

So that’s for the set up. What about “from there on”?
Distribute is a joy to use, much better than our previous set up. Here’s how a sale works. You generate a quote, which when approved needs to be converted to an Order (it’s a simple button), Delivery, and finally an Invoice. This is a standard business model, and you can even start in between one of these steps. To add data to the fields is also very quick. Since your clients and articles are already set up, you just have to type a few characters, till it narrows down on a single client or article. It automatically accepts that entry, which is a brilliant feature. Add quantity for each article, add the shipping, and the price is automatically generated. There’s could be a bit better ‘keyboardising’ of the UI, so in a rapid-fire sale-after-sale business model like a supermarket it might be a handicap. It’s not a slow workflow, it’s just not fast. You can quickly switch to the Preview tab to see what the final template will look like. There’s a bunch of different templates to choose from as well.

When orders are processed, stock is reflected back to the warehouse, making sure everything is accounted for.

Anything you didn’t like?
Nothing really. I mean, there’s that overpowering feeling of leaving out a bunch of fields that you think you need to use, but considering that this is a serious application meant to scale to every kind of use, it’s forgiven. Once you get used to it you learn to block out those things and concentrate on your workflow.

Second, is the price. $550 is a lot for any business to put up front. The new licensing scheme allows you to purchase 500 or 1000 ‘documents licenses’ at a time for $90 or $150 respectively, but it doesn’t make sense for high volume sales. Thankfully, the trial version of the software allows you unlimited access to all the features forever so you can get a good idea of how the application will perform in your workflow. It only prints a watermark over your final invoice after it crosses 30 documents.

At the end of the day, Distribute is a really powerful application, with way more functionality than I’ve just described. It’s got scope for rebates, taxes for different regions, and a very intricate system for warehousing. If merchandising is the need for your business, I’d highly suggest you give Distribute a try.

•••

Overall he was pretty satisfied with what he saw (and I can confirm most of what he says is true). I did however have a few questions for the developer of the software. Given that this is an expensive affair, and could possibly change the way an organisation does business, I needed some reassurances. So I asked Norbert Weiss, the guy behind Seven Lakes Software, what he could tell us about Distribute in the business.

You’ve truly created a world class application, and as you say, all by yourself. What made you pick up such a complex application to start your company with, and how long did it take you to get to where you are?

Merchandise management (ERP) is what I’ve been doing for twenty years. It’s my core competence, from a user and also from an IT point of view. I love Macs and I love to be productive with them. Macs are still very rare in businesses, especially here in Europe. With a limited selection of quality software, most companies looking for ERP solutions had to choose from ugly Windows ports, Filemaker or RealBasic “apps”, Mac applications with very simple functionality or POS/shop solutions. There was no low priced, easy to use, “feels like a real Mac app” software with professional features for trading/wholesale firms available. You could say what was missing was kind of an “iApp for trading firms”.

When Apple introduced Core Data with Mac OS X Tiger in 2006, I started thinking about creating a merchandise management app for Mac OS X. For about two years I learned how to program with it and checked if I can create this kind of software with Apple’s tools. Then I quit my daily job and started working on it full time.

For a first commercial Macintosh software project it was huge, but I knew what the result should look like. I didn’t make any compromises and I took my time. Seventeen months later I released Distribute 1.0 (now known as Distribute)

Distribute is obviously a professional application, used a in a business scenario. And given the nature of the application, what’s the support system going to be like? Businesses don’t like trusting new indie outfits.

Many IT companies trading with ERP software force their customers to sign a costly support contract. Many ERP applications require training and continuous support to enable users to work with it. Training and support is a big part of many ERP software companies’ business. Support for Distribute is free and available worldwide via email or chat. I can afford to offer free support because I know that Distribute requires much less support and training than many other ERP applications do.

[In our anonymous test support requests, Seven Lakes was very thorough with the response, which took around 2-3 days to go through. The ‘live chat’ was mostly offline.]

The total costs for most merchandise management apps consist of four elements: 1) the price for the software license, 2) implementation by the software provider, which is often underestimated, 3) implementation by the user (his working time) and, on the long term, 4) training and support. Many companies looking for ERP software don’t realize this at the time they make their decision. They only compare the prices for the software license. Most companies, especially with big installations, have to pay much more over time than they expected. With Distribute, there are no costs for implementation by the software provider, because Distribute is easy enough to be implemented by the user, and no costs for support, because support is free.

When designing Distribute, I always had the support question in mind. Demand for support grows with the complexity of the application, so I had to keep it very simple for the user. A good example of Distribute’s simplicity is that every document type works the same way. There are no different interfaces for delivery notes, invoices or purchase orders. This alone makes Distribute extremely easy to use.

[It’s a very subjective ‘easy to use’. For someone who doesn’t understand ERP—me—it can be quite daunting]

My experience with Distribute users is that there are very few easily answered questions at the beginning, mostly about the price and rebate system, the most sophisticated part of Distribute.

The manual describes all functions in every detail, in case a user needs to know. It also explains what to consider when starting with a new merchandise management app and it helps with a detailed check list for the implementation.

[Totally agree with the manual. It’s extensive and explains everything in detail]

As I understand it, there was some database shifting issues during the beta, and then for moving to Snow Leopard. Understandably they were in the early stages of the app. Looking ahead what kind of stability do you see with the database, and the app itself? Given that a business might enter thousands of products, what’s the backup plan in case it all comes tumbling down?

Distribute should scale very well with thousands of records. I tested it with 60,000 documents and it still worked fine.

Apple’s Core Data framework supports SQLite stores, which Distribute uses. Core Data makes it much easier for Mac developers to create database-heavy applications. Apple introduced Core Data with Mac OS X Tiger over three years ago and improved it with every new OS. It’s not brand a new, untested technology. Thousands of Mac developers, like Delicious Monster, use it.

Distribute creates a backup of its database every time it quits and keeps ten most recent copies of the database in its backup folder. The user could restore it very easily in the Finder. Together with Time Machine this is a very safe and user friendly backup and restore system.

The iPhone is almost a required extension to a Mac. What’s the scope for an iPhone app that that will, be one with the desktop?

There are two main reasons for an iPhone companion for Distribute: the one is marketing and the other is what makes sense for the user. I think it makes no sense to key delivery notes on an iPhone, but it makes very much sense to have the data Distribute provides on a mobile device. I think of the product catalog, customers with open balances and sales volumes, inventories and so on, in a first step. The second step could be to benefit from the iPhone’s hardware features. There are lots of things that could be done with an iPhone companion for Distribute. At the moment I have to add some features to Distribute for Mac. After that, Distribute for iPhone is on top of my list.

•••

So that’s a look at Distribute for the Mac. Built from the ground up for Mac OS X, from someone experienced in the field. The app has extremely stable through the beta, and it seems like a viable candidate for any business which deals with managing merchandise.

[Img via Flickr]