Established in 2001 – right in the middle of the dot.com bust – the founders of Nathean Technologies, Ronan Wisdom and John Pugh, initially focussed on delivering integration solutions. According to Ronan Wisdom, "From the outset, our business philosophy has been to align ourselves very closely with our customers’ goals. As a result, we were able to notice that increasingly our customers not only needed to integrate data, but also to ask that data questions.

Today the company’s graphical analytics solution – Logix Professional – is used by commercial and government organisations in Ireland, the UK and the US including Sisk Construction, the Health & Safety Authority, Vision Express and Bord Gais. Each customer applies Logix Professional to different aspects of their organisation: sales, finance, payroll, HR, distribution and, increasingly, procurement. But all have a common desire to put their data to better use by enabling users to ask their own questions.

"When you think about it, existing reporting technologies can be very inefficient," says Wisdom. "I’m the business user and I really understand the data I’m working with on a daily basis whether that’s customer claims, stock portfolios, payroll records or purchase orders and supplier invoices. But when I want to create a new report, change an existing report or just ask an ad-hoc question, typically I’ve got to revert to technical support. That involves delays and costs. Meanwhile I’m going to use a spreadsheet to try and figure out the answer.

"Our software is designed to tilt that balance in favour of the user, and enable them to ask their own questions in a very simply, yet powerful way – all in a graphical drag-and-drop, point-and-click environment."

The company has proven the value of this approach to the procurement function, and clients including Sisk Construction and Fingal County Council have analysed procurement data using Logix Professional. "Procurement staff deal with a lot of fast moving information and their decisions really affect performance, cost and profitability. This is as true in small to mid-size companies as it is for larger organisations dealing with multiple projects and suppliers.

"Logix Professional delivers groundbreaking visibility of procurement data, enabling graphical comparison of supplier performance metrics, department and project order trends, requests and authorisations and of course material costs. The speed of access to live purchase order information ensures spend patterns can be analysed with ease, delivering savings as real-time supplier performance information becomes a key input to procurement decisions."

Nathean offers a combination of product, service and consultancy. Some customers buy Logix Professional, configure it and use it themselves. For other customers, Nathean carries out initial configuration to get the best use of the technology. For yet other customers, Nathean delivers their customer’s entire reporting requirements across the company.

In 2007, the company made its first moves into the global marketplace, opening partner channels and gaining its first export customers in the UK such as Active Corporate, the Scottish-based business advisers and chartered accountants and Vision Express, where Logix Professional is installed in each of the company’s 240-plus stores delivering graphical analytics to the local store management.

Nathean funds its aggressive innovation programme from of its own resources. Its current three-year R&D programme is aimed at further enhancing the capabilities and ease of use of its product. The company recently established its European HQ in a custom-designed facility in the IDA Science and Technology Park in Blanchardstown, Dublin, that has been designed to service growth over the next ten years. Sales and marketing operations have been stepped up and the focus now is to build on what has been achieved to date and increase product license revenue by expanding partnerships and winning new customers in Ireland and overseas.

"Our clients radically improve time to decision, eliminate costs and delays, reduce reliance on spreadsheets and increase return on investment from the data they capture and maintain," says Wisdom. "And all of this from a simple idea – making it easy to ask questions."