By Paul Golden

A software firm founded in Derry less than two years ago has carved a lucrative niche in the areas of work process management and data quality. Its strategy of going to market as a sub-contractor with system integrators such as BT, Fujitsu and HP has allowed Foyle Technologies to win business on both sides of the border.

Foyle Technologies emerged from the ashes of The Data Warehouse Practice (TDWP) in October 2003 to capitalise on the potential of two software products - Matchsoft and Commix Framework - which it acquired when the previous owner ceased trading.

'As business development manager for TDWP I had identified potential business with both BT Northern Ireland (BTNI) and HP,' recalled founder and managing director Terry Kavanagh. 'Foyle Technologies was established to develop the opportunities presented by our ownership of the IPR of these products.'

Commix Framework gives Foyle Technologies the ability to build work process management applications such as Checkplan (an online service used by contractors to locate underground pipes and cabling belonging to BT Northern Ireland) and other case management type applications. Matchsoft is a data quality improvement suite of modules used to match, cleanse and enhance customer record data within multiple data sources.

Having worked in BTNI for 30 years and with experience of project management in both ICL and Compaq, Kavanagh had plenty of contacts in the IT and public sectors in Northern Ireland. He leveraged this background to build and implement Checkplan for BTNI and to win work with Dublin City Council (via technology partner IMGS) and BT Syntegra. All software development is conducted in-house.

'Through IMGS we have completed work with in Dublin City and Westmeath councils,' said Kavanagh. 'With Commix Framework/Matchsoft technologies we have adopted the strategy of going to market as a sub-contractor with larger system integrators. This is because our usefulness is in the area of large corporate database quality improvement projects and in general the larger companies win the long term service management engagements that lead to this type of work.'

The only exception to this approach is Checkplan, where the Commix Framework suite was used to create an application/case management environment to automate a specific work process.

Foyle Technologies has five employees (including two Java developers) and is privately held. Its managing director says future expansion will come from organic growth and that rather than diversify, the company has consolidated its technology by incorporating Matchsoft into the Commix Framework to produce a data quality improvement capability that can operate in both real-time and batch mode.