Veco-onesystem™
Our flagship multi-discipline, property software solution

“Veco-onesystem™” is our unique multi-discipline; flexible and powerful property software solution for the modern day property agency. This exciting, first of its kind “leapfrog” product, redefines the future of property software for forward thinking property professionals.

Developed from our many years experience of property software systems we interview Paul Chappell, head of Software Development at Eurolink Software to ask him to explain the reasoning behind “Veco-onesystem™”

Can you give the readers a brief explanation of “Veco-onesystem™” ?

“Veco-onesystem™” is the name we have given to the latest incarnation of our highly regarded Property Management and Accounts software.  The “onesystem” designation is derived from the fact that, unlike previous Eurolink software, we have expanded the functionality to include other property disciplines, notable Sales, and Auctions.

Eurolink has always been associated with providing software that handles property management and accounts, and estate management.  So why the expansion into sales and auctions?

Over the past 2 or 3 years it has become more apparent that property companies who deal in other disciplines besides lettings and management have a requirement for a single database where all information can be recorded regardless of the nature of the business.  In short, they need a single CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Property system.

Let’s take an example.  Suppose you are a buy-to-let investor, or a property developer.  You may be constantly on the lookout for new properties to refurbish and sell on, or properties to let out.

Traditionally, if you are dealing with a specific agent, you might be registered in the agent’s “Sales” system as both a vendor and an applicant; in the “Auction” system as a bidder; and registered again in the “Management” system as a landlord.  You might even be currently renting a property and registered again as a tenant!

“Veco-onesystem™” allows your details to be registered just once, and you can be categorised as an “Owner”, a “Freeholder”, a “Sales Applicant”, a “Lettings Applicant”, a “Tenant”, or indeed a “Supplier”, or in extreme cases you might be everything at the same time!  The point is that you are a single contact record in a central database that can be accessed by different departments.

The same is true, of course, of individual properties.  Properties can be bought and sold and have sitting tenants, all at the same time.  So with “Veco-onesystem™” there is no need to register the property on different systems.

We believe “Veco-onesystemã” is the first system to attempt to provide “onesystem” for all disciplines.

This sounds like a complex system to operate!

By its very nature “Veco-onesystem™” contains an extensive set of data fields relevant to the different property departments, but we have provided very comprehensive facilities to allow a company to tailor exactly what each individual employee can see and do.  This allows inter-department interaction, or not, as determined by the customer.

So you are “bespoking” the system for each customer?

No.  We are providing a single software package, but with extensive parameterisation to allow the clients to configure it to their own needs.  This extends to how the information on the data forms is displayed for each department, and even allows EACH operator to tailor the summary information they see to suit their own job description.  If they have no need of a specific data field they can simple drag it off the screen and never worry about it again.  And if they don’t like the colour they can change that too!

Obviously, each company can decide for themselves at time of purchase which disciplines they need out of “Lettings and Management (including Accounting)”, “Estate (Block) Management”, “Sales”, and “Auctions”. 

The different disciplines can be purchased as required.

Can you give a brief history of the Eurolink software, and how you came to design “Veco-onesystem™”?

Eurolink as a company has been around since 1990.  However, my own involvement with designing and writing Property Management and Accounts software dates back to 1981.  At that time software was designed for a “multi-user” system before the days of PCs and servers, and everything, including the positioning of fields on screen, was coded by hand.

When we started Eurolink in 1990, we developed our programs to run on PCs, and UNIX systems.

The so-called “Millennium Bug” required a further complete re-write in the late 1990’s and at that time we investigated the available tools and databases and decided upon “Microsoft FoxPro” as the development platform, as it was by far the best and fastest PC-based DBMS (Database Management System) available.

This system was windows-based and was in constant development up until the end of 2007.

In 2003 we embarked on expanding our product portfolio into the area of “lettings marketing” with the introduction of “Eurolink Online”.  This was a “hosted, browser-based” service recording landlord, property, and applicant details, and providing a number of automated features including the upload of marketing data and photos to the popular property “portals” as well as the traditional “matching” and reporting facilities.

“Eurolink Online” was based upon the Microsoft SQL Server database, and we had every intention of expanding this to become a full browser-based management and accounting system.  However, it became very clear that browser-based solutions are not suitable for this sort of highly complex system, so we decided against using it for “Veco”.

In 2006 we started designing the next incarnation of the Eurolink software, codenamed “Eurolink NG”, which was to develop into “Veco-onesystem™” We decided it should be based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (the latest Microsoft offering at that time), and that it should be a PC-based, client-server application.

We identified the tools, set up a development team, and started coding in September 2006.

“Veco onesystem™” was launched to the public at the “PCS Expo” in October 2007.

Many packages are now being developed as “web-based” systems. So why did you decide not to go down this route?

Many companies are lured into thinking that developing business applications inside the browser is the way to go. Yes, the IT department gains an important advantage – a centralised way to develop and control business applications, but it is well understood within the IT industry that the browser-based applications are not only very expensive to develop and maintain, the “Application inside Browser” approach imposes significant limitations in end-user functionality, speed, flexibility and ease-of-use.

We believe a “Client-server, rich user interface” is more appropriate for our type of software.

So “Veco-onesystemã” is based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005?

Yes.  In fact, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or above.  Microsoft provide several versions of SQL Server that allow us to make our software available to a range of sizes of business - from a single PC or laptop, right up to corporate level accommodating several hundred users and offices.

Will existing Eurolink clients able to upgrade to “Veco-onesystem™”?

“Veco-onesystem™” is not an upgrade in the traditional sense of building improvements to an existing package.  “Veco-onesystem™” is a completely different system designed and written from scratch.  Certainly, we have taken some ideas from the previous version of the Eurolink products, but we have also removed some previously available but largely unused features.

Existing clients are being offered a “migration” path to “Veco-onesystem™”. We can advise on (and supply) the necessary hardware and software (eg SQL Server), as required.  We will also offer to migrate certain existing data from the client’s current Eurolink system.

What does the future hold for previous Eurolink products?

“Veco-onesystem™” has now become our “flagship” product, and the one we will be developing in the future.  Existing products will continue to be supported; however, such is the interest in “Veco-onesystem™” from existing clients I anticipate that all clients will be migrated over the coming months.

What are some of the unique features of “Veco”?

As I have already mentioned, “Veco-onesystemã” provides functionality required by the different property disciplines “Sales”, “Lettings”, “Management and Accounting”, “Estate (Block) Management”, and “Auctions”.  These include the traditional applicant/property matching for both Lettings and Sales; detailed budgeting and reporting for Estate Management; comprehensive diary and job progression for Property Management, and the all important Client Accounting facilities of double-entry booking keeping, multiple bank accounts, and CNR / RICS compliancy.

Some of the other features include:

Thank you!