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Pivotal Solutions’ strategy for providing high quality software and support

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Pivotal Solutions’ strategy for providing high quality software and support

Posted | Updated by Insights team:

Publication | Update:

May 2022
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high quality software
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Software Consultant Paul Wallace, explains how Pivotal Solutions Limited have cultivated 20 years of success through high quality software and forming good relationships with customers

Since its inception, Pivotal Solutions’ main ambition has been to provide mission critical software to large organisations in need of storage for documents and associated meta data. By working closely with its clients and their staff, Pivotal Solutions endeavour to design a tailored solution for any requirement. Pivotal Solutions has all the capabilities to produce effective solutions, that stem from the tools and skills harnessed by its experienced expert team to meet even the most complex or changing needs of its clients’.

Pivotal Solutions places the utmost importance on taking time to gain a full scope of its clients’ needs to understand the requirements of all potential users and uses of the soft- ware. One of the main focuses for the company is to foresee future requirements, to create software with the agility to be flexible enough to easily cater for changes that occur over time. Having a good working relation- ship with stakeholders and users of all levels allows us to fully understand how the software we write will fit into their environment and workflow.

Alongside its software development, the company also ensures it provides and maintains an efficient, friendly and outstanding level of customer service. This service is an integral part of Pivotal Solutions’ operations, to guarantee the user’s experience is positive and continuous, for years to come.

Intuitive and customisable high quality software

Software is a tool and as such can be an aide or hinderance depending on how familiar the user is with it. High quality software will guide the user and make it easy for them to use it and learn how to perform more advanced tasks as their familiarity with it grows. As with most things, one bad experience is all it takes to put people off using an application.

Problems with software are some- times unavoidable but it is how they are resolved that can make the difference. Pivotal Solutions prides itself on providing an exceptional level of customer service and support that helps user feel they are being listened to and have control over the tools they are using. So even if there are problems, users will still retain their confidence in the tool.

Ensuring user confidence is paramount in ensuring the vision for the software is met and retained. If users lose confidence they may start using the dreaded spreadsheet or other data islands to do their work rather than use the tool that if used correctly will provide the business with the information and data it needs to work.

We have found that keeping each piece of functionality in our software simple helps users understand how the application works and increases buy-in. Each function of the application should be explainable in one or two sentences so that users can see how it works and how they can best use it. That isn’t to say our software doesn’t do some complicated tasks, we just try not to do too much unfathomable magic so the user isn’t sure what will happen when they click the button. We have found that when users have a good understanding of the application that they will use it in ways we hadn’t thought of.

When software is used by large organisations it must be flexible enough to cater for the different way each person or department works. Software that is intuitive and customisable reduces the cost of ownership as there is less training required, less help desk activity and more adherence to the ‘proper’ way of doing things.

high quality software

Providing valuable and responsive support

Even the most meticulously planned application will contain ‘problems’, it’s just the nature of the beast. These ‘problems’ can arise from, changes in user requirements, misunderstanding of requirements, errors in implementation. It doesn’t really matter what they are, but it does matter how they’re dealt with. We pride ourselves on our responsive and timely help desk service. If users are unable to do their work then the business is losing money. We will work with users to achieve a solution as quickly as possible, the most important things is the resolution of the issue.

“We specialise in information and document management to provide software that allows users to store and search complex data and use it within automated and manual workflows.”

Most of our applications rely on integration with other systems, providing and using external functionality. We have found that users will report issues with our software but the issue actually lies elsewhere. Having good relationships with people across our customers organisations allows us to determine where the issues are and either resolve them ourselves or let the appropriate team know of the issue. This expedites the resolution and lets our users get on with their jobs.

Close consultation with our customers

Alongside offering high quality software and support, we specialise in information and document management to provide software that allows users to store and search complex data and use it within automated and manual workflows. The main benefit we offer over competitors is that all our software is written in close consultation with our customers exact requirements, and we also ensure that it is adaptable for their future needs.

We have decades of experience in writing software to manage large repositories of files and associated data. This includes the indexing of binary documents to allow for forensic and casual searching with context sensitive criteria. Over the top of the processing of complex data we have created interfaces and workflow mechanisms to allow the data to be available and processable across various organisations.

Pivotal Solutions is a small agile company that can provide you with the high quality software you need. We can provide the functionality using desktop applications. Web applications or mobile. We will work with you to deliver the software application you need and provide backup and support to make it a worthwhile investment.

 

Please note: This is a commercial profile

© 2019. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

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Software Consultant
Pivotal Solutions Limited
Phone:+44 (0)7771 993 089
Website: Visit Website

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Forecast methodology

The future outlook “forecast” is based on a set of statistical methods such as regression analysis, industry specific drivers as well as analyst evaluations, as well as analysis of the trends that influence economic outcomes and business decision making.
The Global Economic Model is covering the political environment, the macroeconomic environment, market opportunities, policy towards free enterprise and competition, policy towards foreign investment, foreign trade and exchange controls, taxes, financing, the labour market and infrastructure. We aim update our market forecast to include the latest market developments and trends.

Forecasts, Data modelling and indicator normalisation

Review of independent forecasts for the main macroeconomic variables by the following organizations provide a holistic overview of the range of alternative opinions:

  • Cambridge Econometrics (CE)

  • The Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR)

  • Experian Economics (EE)

  • Oxford Economics (OE)

As a result, the reported forecasts derive from different forecasters and may not represent the view of any one forecaster over the whole of the forecast period. These projections provide an indication of what is, in our view most likely to happen, not what it will definitely happen.

Short- and medium-term forecasts are based on a “demand-side” forecasting framework, under the assumption that supply adjusts to meet demand either directly through changes in output or through the depletion of inventories.
Long-term projections rely on a supply-side framework, in which output is determined by the availability of labour and capital equipment and the growth in productivity.
Long-term growth prospects, are impacted by factors including the workforce capabilities, the openness of the economy to trade, the legal framework, fiscal policy, the degree of government regulation.

Direct contribution to GDP
The method for calculating the direct contribution of an industry to GDP, is to measure its ‘gross value added’ (GVA); that is, to calculate the difference between the industry’s total pre­tax revenue and its total bought­in costs (costs excluding wages and salaries).

Forecasts of GDP growth: GDP = CN+IN+GS+NEX

GDP growth estimates take into account:

  • Consumption, expressed as a function of income, wealth, prices and interest rates;

  • Investment as a function of the return on capital and changes in capacity utilization; Government spending as a function of intervention initiatives and state of the economy;

  • Net exports as a function of global economic conditions.

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Market Quantification
All relevant markets are quantified utilizing revenue figures for the forecast period. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) within each segment is used to measure growth and to extrapolate data when figures are not publicly available.

Revenues

Our market segments reflect major categories and subcategories of the global market, followed by an analysis of statistical data covering national spending and international trade relations and patterns. Market values reflect revenues paid by the final customer / end user to vendors and service providers either directly or through distribution channels, excluding VAT. Local currencies are converted to USD using the yearly average exchange rates of local currencies to the USD for the respective year as provided by the IMF World Economic Outlook Database.

Industry Life Cycle Market Phase

Market phase is determined using factors in the Industry Life Cycle model. The adapted market phase definitions are as follows:

  • Nascent: New market need not yet determined; growth begins increasing toward end of cycle

  • Growth: Growth trajectory picks up; high growth rates

  • Mature: Typically fewer firms than growth phase, as dominant solutions continue to capture the majority of market share and market consolidation occurs, displaying lower growth rates that are typically on par with the general economy

  • Decline: Further market consolidation, rapidly declining growth rates

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The Global Economic Model
The Global Economic Model brings together macroeconomic and sectoral forecasts for quantifying the key relationships.

The model is a hybrid statistical model that uses macroeconomic variables and inter-industry linkages to forecast sectoral output. The model is used to forecast not just output, but prices, wages, employment and investment. The principal variables driving the industry model are the components of final demand, which directly or indirectly determine the demand facing each industry. However, other macroeconomic assumptions — in particular exchange rates, as well as world commodity prices — also enter into the equation, as well as other industry specific factors that have been or are expected to impact.

  • Vector Auto Regression (VAR) statistical models capturing the linear interdependencies among multiple time series, are best used for short-term forecasting, whereby shocks to demand will generate economic cycles that can be influenced by fiscal and monetary policy.

  • Dynamic-Stochastic Equilibrium (DSE) models replicate the behaviour of the economy by analyzing the interaction of economic variables, whereby output is determined by supply side factors, such as investment, demographics, labour participation and productivity.

  • Dynamic Econometric Error Correction (DEEC) modelling combines VAR and DSE models by estimating the speed at which a dependent variable returns to its equilibrium after a shock, as well as assessing the impact of a company, industry, new technology, regulation, or market change. DEEC modelling is best suited for forecasting.

Forecasts of GDP growth per capita based on these factors can then be combined with demographic projections to give forecasts for overall GDP growth.
Wherever possible, publicly available data from official sources are used for the latest available year. Qualitative indicators are normalised (on the basis of: Normalised x = (x - Min(x)) / (Max(x) - Min(x)) where Min(x) and Max(x) are, the lowest and highest values for any given indicator respectively) and then aggregated across categories to enable an overall comparison. The normalised value is then transformed into a positive number on a scale of 0 to 100. The weighting assigned to each indicator can be changed to reflect different assumptions about their relative importance.

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The principal explanatory variable in each industry’s output equation is the Total Demand variable, encompassing exogenous macroeconomic assumptions, consumer spending and investment, and intermediate demand for goods and services by sectors of the economy for use as inputs in the production of their own goods and services.

Elasticities
Elasticity measures the response of one economic variable to a change in another economic variable, whether the good or service is demanded as an input into a final product or whether it is the final product, and provides insight into the proportional impact of different economic actions and policy decisions.
Demand elasticities measure the change in the quantity demanded of a particular good or service as a result of changes to other economic variables, such as its own price, the price of competing or complementary goods and services, income levels, taxes.
Demand elasticities can be influenced by several factors. Each of these factors, along with the specific characteristics of the product, will interact to determine its overall responsiveness of demand to changes in prices and incomes.
The individual characteristics of a good or service will have an impact, but there are also a number of general factors that will typically affect the sensitivity of demand, such as the availability of substitutes, whereby the elasticity is typically higher the greater the number of available substitutes, as consumers can easily switch between different products.
The degree of necessity. Luxury products and habit forming ones, typically have a higher elasticity.
Proportion of the budget consumed by the item. Products that consume a large portion of the consumer’s budget tend to have greater elasticity.
Elasticities tend to be greater over the long run because consumers have more time to adjust their behaviour.
Finally, if the product or service is an input into a final product then the price elasticity will depend on the price elasticity of the final product, its cost share in the production costs, and the availability of substitutes for that good or service.

Prices
Prices are also forecast using an input-output framework. Input costs have two components; labour costs are driven by wages, while intermediate costs are computed as an input-output weighted aggregate of input sectors’ prices. Employment is a function of output and real sectoral wages, that are forecast as a function of whole economy growth in wages. Investment is forecast as a function of output and aggregate level business investment.

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