‘We’re on the cusp of something very exciting’: Minerva IT Support on its relationship with iplicit

Minerva ‘values uniqueness’ 

Minerva is a “value added reseller for financial accounting solutions”, explains Jon.  

“We also provide IT managed services, development and telecoms. We’ve been around for over 40 years, delivering to hundreds of financial accounting-based clients across the UK – across different sectors, verticals and sizes of companies. 

“We’ve found over the years that every customer is unique and Minerva tries to value that. We like to really understand how the client works, what the significant challenges are within their business, what their growth strategy is. We’re trying to deliver solutions to reflect that uniqueness.” 

Clients can be large or small, but typically they tend to have between five and 50 finance system users.  

‘iplicit knew the gaps in the market’   

The Minerva team was contacted about iplicit in the software’s early days by Paul Sparkes and Rob Steele, now Chief Product Officer and Chief Finance Officer. 

“We had many decades of working with them in their previous life as part of the team at Exchequer,” says Dave Rendall, Technical Director at Minerva. 

“They approached us with this new product they were marketing. They knew the industry extremely well and realised where the gaps were in the market. You’ve got high-end cloud systems like NetSuite and low-end cloud systems like Xero but nothing in the middle. There was no midrange cloud system and they had identified that as a gap, as well as various verticals and niche markets.  

“The proposition was excellent from day one. You knew it was fully functional. It certainly went a long way to addressing most of the issues and problems people have at the minute with their systems.” 

Minerva had a good understanding of those problems. 

“FDs and MDs probably have a mix of systems that meet 90% of their business requirements but they’ve got to maintain different systems and they’re reliant on manual processes,” says Dave. 

“What’s more, their systems don’t address the modern workplace and a distributed staff with people working from home.  

“iplicit gives you that ‘single pane of glass’ system, with workflows and reporting on demand. It addresses complex requirements so beautifully, where other products just don’t do it. Certainly, in the midrange it stood out as the product to go with – and we had a lot of trust in the team from our previous working relationships.  

“The product is excellent and the vision is fantastic.” 

‘It’s suitable for a broad range of clients’  

The Minerva team can see that the market for iplicit is a big one. 

“It’s a solution that’s priced for the midmarket, with a typical implementation time of weeks rather than months,” says Jon. 

“With other systems, that can be a lot longer. Once you get to the enterprise-level systems, you’re talking about 100-plus day implementations, which are beyond the scope of most midsized organisations, both in cost and in the internal resources needed to manage that process.  

“At the lower end of the market, Xero and QuickBooks provide perfectly good solutions for a micro and small customer, but not the depth of analysis, the depth of cross-company reporting, the workflows et cetera that our clients are looking for in their next level of product.  

“What’s more, iplicit’s API integrations allow us to feed in other products, which is something pretty much every customer is demanding these days.” 

He has been impressed by the way iplicit can be configured to suit different sectors. 

“To date, our iplicit clients include financial services, education, transport and logistics. So, you can see the breadth of the client base that we can serve with just this one product – and that’s not by bespoke developments, it’s just configuration within a common platform,” he says. 

“We've got many, many years of experience of taking off-the-shelf software and adding bespoke functionality to it. We don’t need to do that with iplicit. We're simply plugging in third party systems using the web API.” 

‘Clients say, “I don’t suppose it does this…” and it does’ 

The Minerva team has enjoyed a high level of support from iplicit since becoming a reseller partner. 

“The relationship is working very well. iplicit is extremely supportive at all levels of the partnership. They’re great people to deal with – extremely professional,” says Jon. 

“You can see they have a wealth of experience in the market and there’s a real passion to deliver excellent software. 

“I’ve seen it myself in many meetings we’ve had with end users. We’ve had many years of frustration with other software, where you’re asked a question and you have to say, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t do that’, whereas that doesn’t happen in iplicit demos. There’s almost always an answer of ‘yes’.  

“That’s so refreshing, both from our perspective because we want to deliver excellent solutions, but also for the client. They ask ‘Well, I don’t suppose it does this…?’ and it does.” 

He adds: “It’s a true partnership. There’s instant access to trainers and training resources on the technical side. We have a partner-assigned technical liaison point, Helen, who we deal with on a weekly basis, who’s been fantastic throughout. We’ve been working hand in hand on implementations, bringing our teams up to speed at a rapid pace by having them work alongside people who’ve been delivering iplicit for significantly longer. 

“We’ve worked with iplicit’s Technical Solutions Consultant Guy Burton before over many years and he’s a superstar. We get access to pre-sales resources, marketing collateral and so on.”  

iplicit ‘builds what customers are asking for’ 

“A lot of accounting software is long in the tooth and is no longer being improved and updated as it once was,” says Dave. 

“With existing finance systems, we’ve seen the support, the progression, the development on those systems slow dramatically as investment drops off because they’re seen as older on-premise solutions,” he says. 

“But with iplicit, being a cloud solution, the progression in functionality has been rapid.” 

That development has drawn a lot on customer feedback, he has noticed. 

“iplicit is listening to clients and future clients about what their requirements are and what they’d like to see,” Jon says. 

“It’s building new functionality based on what customers are asking for, rather than what it thinks they want. A lot of vendors have done the opposite – just done their own thing and then said, ‘Here you go’,  

“iplicit wants to be there for the lifetime value of the client, not just to make the initial sale and move on – which is how some vendors are, unfortunately.” 

iplicit ‘is focused on being a market leader’ 

The Minerva team sees the relationship with iplicit growing. 

Jon says: “We in Minerva feel we’re on the cusp of something very exciting. We haven’t always felt that with some of our partners in the past; some of their thinking about the future has been unclear. 

“But iplicit has a great product, it provides an excellent service and it’s focused on being a market leader – so we look forward to a very exciting future.” 

Find out more

Find out more about becoming an iplicit reseller partner.