FAQs / A frequently asked question

what's in a name

Beacon are named after a local landmark in the Chiltern Hills, Beacon Hill. The name 'Beacon' comes from the beacons that were set up on hills to warn of invasion, originally because of the danger of Viking incursions. Each was located within sight of the next so that the warning could be spread from one side of the kingdom to the other with the minimum of delay. These eventually were established across the whole of England. The word 'Beacon' as part of a name is therefore common in England.

some background

Beacon products have often been at the forefront of a market sector. Talisman was available as a solution to recruitment companies from the mid-80's and was the first fully integrated solution in the UK. As the industry goes through high's and low's, the ledgers were used as the core of a solution for a new market sector, Metal Stockists. Indeed the Beacon solution, StockMaster, became the most used in that market place. After acquisition of competitive solutions, this part of Beacon finally merged with it's next largest competitor, and was spun off as a separate company.

Beacon also developed and installed a document management solution for a very large electrical distributor and the roots of that product, Imago, is still present in Talisman today managing the storage of timesheet images.

Beacon also had leading fax server solutions for both Unix (U-Fax)and Linux (Fax2Send) users and it is still used by multi-nationals to this day. Fax2Send is used with Talisman for those customers who wish to send or receive conventional faxes, in the latter case normally timesheets, where the image is used as an on-screen entry document, and printed automatically with invoices if required.