About | TSF Service & Solutions Firm

What we are & what we are not!

We are integrated business systems developers …and as such websites are not our core strength! As you may have noticed 😉 But we are really good at developing fully integrated business systems to support and where necessary enforce key business processes.

Now, our systems may not look pretty …. but looks are not everything! Especially in the business systems environment.

What really matters is:-

Does it deliver what the business needs?
Is it easy to use and implement?
Is it cost effective?
When changes, upgrades and improvements are made is there an absolute minimum of disruption to the business and user workload?
Can the system change and adapt as and when the business requirements change?
Are the support costs and overheads low?
Does the system support and where necessary enforce business process requirement and authorisation levels?
Does the system provide a means to reduce or eliminate repetitive manual workloads?
Does the system eliminate/reduce the need for 3rd party systems and bolt-ons?

We believe we can answer a RESOUNDING YES to all of these points.

Our systems are fast, blazing fast and they do not need massive hardware or bandwith resources to operate. They are easy to use, intuitively aligned with the business processes and user job requirements.

Each clients system; though based on a solid set of core objects, which have been developed and enhanced over many, many years; is fully customised for that client and their business.

TSF Service & Solutions Firm who we are and how we got here.

TSF was established in 1998 as a merging of two different operations. The first of which was the initial systems based partnership between Stephen Ashford and Ivan Andersen. The other was a team that came out of the Gold Fields stable and specialised in hardware and networks.

Stephen and Ivan had formed their initial business connection back in the late 1980’s when they both worked for ICL. Towards the end of the 1980’s both Stephen and Ivan decided to leave corporate life and so left ICL to start their own independent businesses.

In 1995 both Stephen and Ivan had established themselves as successful independent Rascal consultants. Rascal is a rapid application development tool. The Rascal acronym stands for Resource, Activity, Scheduling, Control, Accounting and Logistics. This tool; which is object oriented in design; and its extensive and powerful library of program objects enable developers to rapidly implement and customise fully integrated business systems for their clients. These systems can be anything from a typical enterprise management system to highly specialised business process specific modules and functions. The nature of the development environment allows for continuous improvement, development and change within the business to be mapped and supported by the software. This ability has enabled TSF to support and retain customers over an extended period of time. With some of our original clients from the late ’80’s and early ’90’s still with us and still enjoying the benefits of have our software and services support their businesses.

Through the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the business went through a number of changes and this ultimately resulted in a return to the original successful pairing of Stephen and Ivan returning to their core focus and skill sets of systems development and support.