ilion woes blamed on Tolas software

A business software application has been linked to the problems at troubled distributor ilion, whose chairman and founder Wayne Channon stepped down last week.

Sources have told Silicon.com that Tolas, an inventory management and stock control package from US-based developer, Adonix Transcomm, created problems in telesales and invoicing. After the package failed to work in a telesales environment, the company spent thousands of pounds in consultancy fees trying to adapt it, according to the sources.

Last week, Wayne Channon resigned from the company he founded in 1989, after three profit warnings in a year. It is understood that disagreement over Tolas added to board-level conflict about the future of ilion.

One reseller commented: "The decision to put in Tolas was an absolute disaster." The reseller claimed ilion was unable to process end-of-month reports for four months, having to write them by hand instead.

One IT consultant said: "It's fair to say the users in the call centre of Tolas were scathing about it. It's designed as an order entry package, not for telesales, which is a very fast turnaround environment."

Tolas, which is resold through Bull, is understood to have cost ilion several million pounds.

Another UK distributor, Metrologie, experienced teething problems when it installed Tolas in early 1997. A source within Metrologie's parent group, CHS said: "Tolas is a widely-used processing and distribution tool, but it doesn't give good stock control or analysis functions."

Selwyn Castleden, director of MIS for ilion group, commented: "We were never in a position with Tolas where we weren't able to take orders from our customers or fulfil. The main weakness was reporting from the database back for internal use. Perhaps some people were expecting too much from the product. In an ideal world, we'd have installed a bespoke system from Baan or SAP." He declined to comment on whether he would buy Tolas again.

A spokesman for Adonix said: "From a general standpoint the Tolas product functions very effectively, but we can't comment on individual cases."