Originally earmarked as a café facility to go alongside a pretty marina, the fabulous facility is now the Technium, an incubator project for knowledge led, high growth businesses and prebusinesses. The project received 882k in Objective 1 funds back in 2004, and now there are the first 3 businesses settled in at the Technium (SmartData, Predictive Solutions and Unigryw). Other contributors to the project were Pathways to Prosperity and the Welsh Development Agency.

Natalie Moyce gets the low-down in this full interview with SmartData

How long have you been in business?
(Gareth) 5 years, 1999.

Which one of you set it up?
Simon Hulse. He was running the business on the side from lecturing. He started writing software to make his job easier, then he started making more income from that than lecturing and he took the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy, and the Spin Out Programme was running at the same time so he Spun Out from that,

When did you step in then?
I started in 2003, part engineer, part marketing officer.

Did you go to university here?
Yes, I finished my degree at Aberystwyth in Software Engineering, in 2002. There isn’t much around here in the way of IT jobs, especially not Software Engineering, but I stubbornly refused to move, I stayed round here, worked for the council for a bit, and then a job came up here.

It’s been a brilliant opportunity for you then?
Absolutely yes. It’s one of the only software engineering businesses in the area.

So how have these facilities helped you in job creation terms or growth terms?
It’s given us the space to actually expand, because the place we had before, it was nice, it was out in the countryside, in offices provided by the university, part of the Spin Out. We were on a park basically sharing an office with another company called TBS; we were sharing a top floor.

Are things going well? Why Technium then?
Yes, there are seven of us in the company. At the moment we are changing our software development processes to make things more efficient and accessible to our clients. We wanted to be able to show a good environment to our clients, it was important that our clients were presented with a very good image when they arrived. So the Technium was thought of in those terms, good links, good associations, well thought of by the Welsh Development Agency. All the above really. We could have had more space at the other centre. It was a lovely rural location, a nice relaxed working environment.

So image is everything in your line of work then?
Not necessarily. People could arrive in our car park before and be sort of scrabbling for space, deliveries of sheep, artificial insemination services and sheep dogs running around (laughter).

So you started the business (looking at Simon)?
(Simon) Just happened at the time that local graduates were best for the job. During my time at University of Aberystwyth as a lecturer I was becoming involved in software design. The university were not interested in the commercial side of things, they were rather I spent my time doing other activities. I carried on from home then on the side. Doing a good job I didn’t envisage any natural growth whatsoever. Doing a good job for people they came back for more referred me on. Then I was juggling practically 2 fulltime jobs for a while. Then the opportunity for voluntary redundancy came up. The company became Ltd. In 2000, I left University in 2001. We are going to be in a fairly unique position when compared to other tenants in that we are fairly well established. When we came here we were established as a Spin Out, originally, so we came to an agreement with the university at the time. We had 3 years trading at that time. We’ve got the trading history and evolved different aspects of the business. We’ve had a lot of support from Business Eye, Spin Out. The nature of the support we require now is a little more specialist. We need to fine tune the business plan, we are at the second phase of development really, so more specialist consulting, perhaps consulting that is a little more difficult to get hold of. Through the contacts at Technium we should be able to get hold of contacts we can’t locally. Through the contacts of the Technium management we should have access to much more specialist consultants to help us. In particular for the first quarter this year, we are involving product, rather than being service based, that has been our primary aim really, bespoke software development.

Who are your client base, where are they?
They’re all over and could be any business really. It evolved predominantly in the agricultural sector, purely because of my contacts through my history at the university. We do a lot of work in the agricultural sector, not necessarily directly for farmers, more for organisations and groups that are dealing with great volumes of information. We have been applying the same application across different markets. We’ve also done several systems in the leisure industry, construction industry and biosciences. Our markets are in 2 directions. Within a given sector we’ve got all the different aspects of software we do and then we are trying to evolve product, we then have an application horizontally across different industry sectors, and our first product is task tracking software, managing timesheet information which for the public bodies and organisations, drawing down European funding for projects, the requirements are on timed activities.

Is that is real-time?
Yeah, so it logs your time against projects and activities. You can use it for managing flexi time, or determine the overheads of a business. We’ve got a few guinea pigs, some trial versions have gone out, the beta version is getting a good thrashing, then we’ll polish it up. In parallel, are just kicking off trying to get some branding image together, determine how we are going to market it, we are also scouting for interested parties for their input on, so we can shape the features that are going to be in the final version.

Have you got a name yet?
We’ve been referring to it as task tracker, but I’m sure in the process of marketing we will come up with something more imaginative (laughs).

What are the benefits of being here at Technium rather than in other offices?
I think it is the potential additional support, which is tailored to your requirements. If you look at the pounds per month, it is not a cheap option, but there is a huge potential for return on that investment, which you wouldn’t have to the same degree at other centres. There is a shortage of high quality office premises of this nature in the area. The Science park has got some nice office spaces but facilities are being snapped up very quickly, other than that there are few modern, well designed, equipped serviced offices, very few. Also with the Welsh Development Agency promoting the Technium they are also promoting us, and we’ve had quite a few press releases written on us.

You’re here for 3 years aren’t you?
Yes,

Is that worrying at all the fact that you are out in 3 years?
Well it was a significant factor, before we accepted coming here, trying to get an exit strategy and there isn’t anything operating yet. There is talk of an Enterprise Park somewhere; there is a controversial site at Capel Bangor, who knows what’s going to happen there. There are other sites around Wales, but apart from the potential development of Capel Bangor I am not sure about being housed locally. We have been assured that we will be looked after. The nature of what we do we don’t have to be in Cardiff, we don’t need to; we can work in a great environment, nice rural area.

A lot of your clients would be down in Cardiff?
All over really, Dumfrice, Oxford, Ashford in Kent, Midlands. We have been assured by the Welsh Development Agency that we won’t be kicked out with nothing. If there is no appropriate provision.

How big do you want to grow, do you want to be the next Gates?
(Laughs). The plan is not to grow to a colossal extent, at the moment we haven’t got a big enough team to support a portfolio of bespoke work and to manage several product lines, they may evolve into subsidiary companies in their own right. So we need to evolve the team, so that we can provide a good development team for a greater variety of bespoke work. We’d have enough staff to maintain, develop and support a range of products and then the necessary administrative staff. Beyond that, we get into dangerous ground there because there are some very big software companies, you start treading on their toes, and they could really put up brick walls in the market. There is a glaring gap there for smaller software development companies that provide service for SMEs, which is affordable. Software development is an expensive game and if you are looking for a software house to provide your services and products then you are talking very large bills. So we pitch ourselves in the middle, affordable, friendly and a company that’s a little lighter on its feet that can evolve, as technology and requirements change. We big it up to be a good solid company to work in that has a very stable foundation and a long future,

END