Polsoft Engineering 

Polsoft Engineering

“Pricing is a crucial criterium in countries with lower pricing levels, like Poland. While competitive database vendors would have to considerably adapt their pricing models downwards, the pricing structure offered by Pervasive Software has allowed Polsoft Engineering to develop a solution in line with Polish market prices.”

Mariusz Teresinski, VP, Polsoft Engineering

About Polsoft Engineering

Independent Software Vendor Polsoft Engineering was established in 1992. Its solutions for the warehousing industry and in particular for the pharmaceutical sector, are aimed solely for the Polish market. With Poland joining the EU, the company will be able to extend its activities towards similar industries outside the national borders.

Polsoft Engineering (20 employees) is an all-round specialist in the information technology sector. Its core activity is software, but hardware is also part of the offer. In addition, Polsoft provides network cabling and VoIP systems.

While most of its customers are SMEs, Polsoft Engineering is also successful in the large enterprise segment. With record revenues of about 560 million euros in 2002 and being one of the top 5 pharmaceutical warehouses in Poland, Farmacol S.A. is one of Polsoft’s bigger customers. Pharmacol runs PS 2000, Polsoft’s current warehouse management system.

Business Challenge

PS 2000 was originally designed for Medi Farm, a medium-sized pharmacy warehouse. The first version (PS-HANDEL) offered basic warehouse functionality for receiving, stocking and shipping goods. The solution was developed to run on a Novell server, a brand commonly used in Poland in the early 1990s.

In the search for a database management system, Mariusz Teresinski, business development manager, was referred to Pervasive.SQL by a Novell business partner. Compatibility with Novell was one argument in favour; another was Pervasive.SQL’s dual nature (transactional and relational). These assets in combination with system stability - computer systems used to crash easily and data was often lost - offered Polsoft Engineering unparalleled competitive advantage.

Pervasive’s Solution

In the decade following, Polsoft Engineering continued to refine and add more functionality to its warehouse management system, often inspired by new customers requesting more features. Farmacol S.A. has, to that extent, played an important role. The company has been a driving force behind a lot of deeper functionalities, like automatic storing, selling, accounting and supplier management.

The most recent version of PS 2000 has been developed with Borland tools to run on a Novell, Linux or Windows 2000 platform. Clients run on Windows 95/98, 2000 and XP. Though most of the customers are still working on Novell Netware, recent years have seen a growing number of customers that are switching to Windows and even Linux.

Mariusz Teresinski: “Pervasive promised and offered stability combined with scalability and an affordable pricing”. Scalability is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the solution is used by small companies with a few users as well as by mid-sized to large companies like Farmacol. PS 2000 grows along with the company, as employee numbers increase, but also when business processes are aligned with new trends, regardless whether such processes are relational or transactional as Pervasive.SQL supports both relational and transactional processing. A growing number of Polsoft’s customers is using the SQL interface.

Mariusz Teresinski: “Pricing is a crucial criterium in countries with lower pricing levels, like Poland. While competitive database vendors would have to considerably adapt their pricing models downwards, the pricing structure offered by Pervasive Software has allowed Polsoft Engineering to develop a solution in line with Polish market prices.”

Developments in Pervasive’s product portfolio have allowed Polsoft Engineering to continue to enhance their own solutions. Growing customers often establish affiliate offices or warehouses in other parts of the country or beyond. Today approximately 20 % of Polsoft’s customers have more than 1 office and data replication is one of the key issues they are facing. Developments to Pervasive’s replication service, i.e. DataExchange, is, therefore, closely monitored.

Bottom Line

“Our whole business is based on Pervasive.SQL. The self-tuning database is the very heart of PS 2000 and allows our customers to concentrate on their core business avoiding technology issues like database management. An analysis performed by Wright Investor’s Service on activities at Farmacol S.A., has shown that the latter scores 25 to more than 400 percent higher sales per employee than its 3 closest competitors. I will not claim that our solution is solely responsible for that difference, but I am sure it has helped.”, says Teresinski.

For more information

To learn more about Pervasive Software and our solutions, please visit www.pervasive.com. To reach the North American sales office, call 1.800.287.4383, extension 2. For Latin, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand, call +1.512.231.6000. In Europe, for Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, call +800.12.12.34.34. For any other European, Middle Eastern, African or Asian countries (excluding Japan), call +32.70.23.37.61. For Japan, please call +81.3.3293.5300, or visit www.pervasive.co.jp.