Kingsgate Enterprises, Inc
History
Kingsgate Enterprises had humble
beginnings. Bob Gerrish had been working in various capacities at
Associates for Management Services, Inc (AMS) in Bellevue, WA. In
1983 AMS was purchased by Software International and they, in turn, by
General Electric Information Systems Company (GEISCO). AMS was
(re?)developing and marketing an integrated Accounting and
Manufacturing (MRP II) system that originated Tyee Aircraft in Everett,
WA. Bob worked with deployment of the product at customer sites,
as a developer, as a Product Manager and finally as Manager of Software
Support. The product AMS MMC (Manufacturing Management and
Control) was aimed at mid-sized businesses. GEISCO tried
eliminating the marketing structure that AMS had set up and switching
to a
direct sales approach. After many months, they came to the
realization that their sales force had no concept of how to market to
smaller size businesses than the Fortune 500 companies they had dealt
with in the past. In spite of the fact that they deemed the
product an excellent product, they decided to shelve it and close the
business. In June 1984, AMS officially closed it's doors.
Despite that, the MMC product was carried on by other vendor /
developers and has transformed into some of the industry leaders in ERP
systems for Manufacturers; among those are ROI
Systems Mange2000, PRO:MAN
from Proco Systems and Flexgen
from Software21.
Bob developed contracts with 3 of the AMS customers who wanted him to
continue supporting them. Bob with his wife Janice, was also
involved in a small chicken
and produce farm in the Kirkland, WA known as Kingsgate
Farm. (This was in rented property on what is now the Olive
Garden across from Totem Lake West, but was at that time sort of
considered part of the Kingsgate area.) Bob set up shop,
software consulting, in his living room,
with a dumb terminal and a 1200 baud dial up modem as Kingsgate
Enterprises. In 1985 he was joined by Doug Broadie who was an
unemployed insurance auditor and wanted to be retrained in the
Information Technology world. At first Doug worked out of his
home office. After a few months, Kingsgate Enterprises purchased
a used office trailer and had it installed on the farm. During Pumpkin
season, Bob and Doug often took a few minutes off to take a trailer
load of pre-schoolers on a ride up the hill to the pumpkin patch with
the tractor. After Doug's trainee period, Doug and Bob, along with Dick
Amendola who was a former manager at AMS incorporated the business as
Kingsgate
Enterprises, Inc. All went well for a while and Kingsgate
Enterprises, Inc. developed some products that were being marketed
nationally to Pick Database shops. The main bulk of business was
still PICK database and MMC consulting.
In January, 1987, the consulting business went "South". Three
clients were keeping Doug and Bob busy full time and Dick had a "real"
job with Boeing. With the work load and no one doing marketing,
the inevitable happened. One of the clients was sold out by their
product lines, which generated a lot of work transferring data to other
systems. This was the genesis of the "Export Processor" which was
marketed nationally. The second client was purchased by their
biggest customer and immediately ceased using any outside consulting /
development services to cut costs. The third client merged with a
customer on the East coast and also ceased using outside services.
At that point, Doug and Bob started marketing and started leaning
toward the new, but emerging PC market. Neither one of them
being salesman and and making honest promises to potential customers,
rather than salesman's unfounded promises, didn't
get very far. Consequently, Doug went back to insurance auditing
and Bob found a position at Rocket Research in the Information
Technology department. Kingsgate Enterprises was shelved for
several years.
In 1992, Bob started working with NTA (Northwest Traffic Associates)
who was a third party Freight Bill Audit and Payment firm. They
were a small firm in Des Moines, WA (later in Federal Way, WA), but had
some industry heavy weights as customers. Their customers
included Intel, Paccar/Kenworth Motors, Sun Microsystems, Apple
Computer, Microsoft, Boeing, AMD and many other large and famous
companies. Bob tried to talk them into setting up an internal IT
resales department to save some costs, but primarily control what went
into the computers they were purchasing. They didn't want to go
that route, but since Bob still had PC Distributor ties, they agreed to
purchase through him and Kingsgate Enterprises, Inc. was reborn.
Bob had kept the glimmer alive since 1988, but hadn't actively worked
at the business, only occasionally selling a PC or two as an after
hours sideline.
Now Bob Gerrish is back at it again.
Bob has done many major projects in the past.
Some examples of these projects are:
- Dexterra, Inc. (Subject Matter Expert for the conversion of Multi-Value database to
SQL based applications)
- Rainier Solutions (Unix Operating System Support for several of their customers)
- Griffin Underwriting (conversion of SCO multi-value system to UniVerse on Windows;
configuration and installation of server; conversion of reports to run on printers)
- Prisim Electroics (Evaluate needs for Manufacturing Resource Planning, find solutions and
install DBA Manufacturing PC based MRP system)
- US Metrics (conversion of SCO UniVerse based system to run on SUSE Linux including of
sever configuration; conversion of reports to run on internal printers; on-going
support of server and database)
Kingsgate is seeking talented customers and is affiliated with several
Internet based Computer Maintenance referral vendors.
Bob
Gerrish resume
Home Page
Return to
Kingsgate's home page
Comments, Requests or Inquiries
Email us at:
KingsgateEnterprises@gmail.com
Copyright © 2004-2019
Kingsgate Enterprises, Inc. and Robert P. Gerrish
Created: November 19, 2004
(last updated 01/17/19 06:15 AM)