John Docherty
John graduated from Strathclyde University with a BSc.(Hons) in Computer Science in 1995. During his time at university, John worked freelance as a systems analyst and developer, writing bespoke financial and administration systems for small companies. His Honours Thesis on a Generalised Approach to Business Information Systems illustrated the commercial benefits of advanced development tools maximising re-use and prototyping to significantly reduce the development cycle.
Leaving university, John formed Centaur Computer Systems Limited. Centaur gained various Livewire and Entrepreneurship awards for assisting SME companies in South Lanarkshire with a variety of financial and database applications. All three partners in Centaur were able to build on the experience gained and use this as a platform to secure senior roles with well-established companies when, after 3 successful years, it was agreed that further industry experience on a larger scale was the next step in their career development.
John joined Quorum Systems Limited in Livingston in 1998 as a financial ERP consultant. Already an established company with multi-national clients, Quorum were new to the emerging range of technologies in mid-range ERP systems. Introduced to the XAL product, with the benefit of both a business and technical background, it was not long before the products capabilities were being fully explored. Over the next 3 years, John was instrumental in the successful sales, implementation and support of the product, gaining an expertise in financial, manufacturing, supply chain and planning processes, establishing close links with companies across the UK that remain strong 10 years later.
Having established a firm client base, John left Quorum towards the end of 2000 to join a rival ERP company Hugur UK Ltd. Upon joining Hugur, John began to build their expertise in the product, training support and development staff and introducing new systems for tracking implementation and support projects. After 6 months, John was appointed as Managing Director of the company and joined the board of directors. Continuing the successful relationship with established clients, these clients migrated from Quorum to Hugur, establishing Hugur as the UK’s XAL centre of excellence.
As part of the EJS Group in Iceland, John re-branded Hugur as EJS UK and developed the business to achieve record levels of turnover and profitability by diversifying the range of services while retaining the core emphasis on the XAL product. Following the acquisition of Damgaard by Navision and then Navision by Microsoft, EJS UK were established as a leading Microsoft Business Solutions Partner solely on their performance with the XAL product. EJS UK was acquired in 2004 by a group of private Icelandic investors and John left EJS in 2005 after 5 hugely successful years to continue the focus on the XAL product while EJS UK went on to develop other products.
Forming The Docherty Partnership, John has continued the relationship with clients established over the years, assisting with upgrades to the very latest version of XAL and developing modules to enhance the standard system’s functionality. Utilising the expertise in migrating clients to XAL, John has been able to combine this with his experience as a Prince2 Practitioner to manage clients migration away from XAL to meet the requirements to adopt parent company systems following acquisitions.
Building on 10 years expertise in XAL and over 15 year’s industry experience with over 50 implementations, John continues to offer clients access to a wealth of expertise in every aspect of Enterprise Resource Planning and Business Process Engineering to ensure they receive the full benefits possible with real-time integrated systems.