Dataworks Celebrate 22 years in Business

This year marks 22 years in business for Dataworks Limited. Founded by Liam Curham and Brian Robinson in 1995 today they employ 28 staff operating from their head office in Waterford based in the Six Cross Roads Business Park and have a presence in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Wexford.

From providing solutions to the SMEs in the region in the early days, three quarters of Dataworks current clients operate in the Life Sciences sector including Bausch & Lomb, Teva, Cartamundi, Honeywell, Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific. Dataworks have become a trusted software partner for many of these clients and have developed relationships with them internationally via their Irish sites – today one third of Dataworks business is now export based.

Over 5 years ago Liam and Brian committed to implementing a strong innovation strategy before the word “innovation” became as universal as it is today. It was a huge commitment in more areas than one, but this innovation process has led to many exciting developments for Dataworks in the area of new product & service developments and internal process innovations. The company has now grown from focusing on software development alone to one that now meets the broader demands of the regulated multi nationals. A direct result of the innovation strategy are two of the most recent additions to the service portfolio that Dataworks offers these regulated industries is in the area of Validation  Services and Managed IT services. According to Liam Curham, Chief Executive Officer:

“By responding to the unmet needs of our existing clients in addition to focusing heavily on innovation within Dataworks we have expanded into the provision of software, equipment and production validations in the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device sectors. This has proven to be a huge growth area for us to the extent that we now have a presence in Galway providing these services to Med Tech companies.

We have also added the provision of managed software help desk and other outsourced managed services to both local and North American sites from our base in Waterford. This is a cost-effective way for companies to meet their software needs when they don’t have the requisite internal skills or where they have a capacity constraint. We offer a flexible arrangement here where we cover a variety of software related needs.”

From a technology perspective, the advent of the Analytics, Industrial Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 has allowed Dataworks to expand the software solutions that they now offer. Brian Robinson Chief Technology Officer said:

“These are exciting times where we can help Medical Device and Pharmaceutical companies to unlock the potential and optimise their existing equipment and systems. We are using technologies such as Microsoft Power BI, Qlik, Tableau and Iconics to transform  and visualise their existing data generating  actionable insights.

Another area where we are seeing a lot of engagement is where companies who are at a certain level of maturity in their Lean journey want to go the next level with their Visual management and monitoring of KPI’s. By that we mean leveraging technology to automate and effectively remove some non-value add steps in the collection and collating of data to present metrics across the entire plant including quality, operational and financial metrics. We have technologies and capabilities to integrate the companies’ different systems and present a unified dashboard that can help bring employee engagement to the next level and help foster a culture of Continuous Improvement.”

Dataworks are aligned to the Lean agenda being pursued by the majority of their clients and a number of the Dataworks team have completed training in Lean, Six Sigma and Enterprise Excellence based on the Shingo model. They have even commenced the implementation of certain aspects of the Shingo model internally in pursuit of their own Continuous Improvement objectives and to ensure that they continue to meet the needs of their customers.

In fact, Dataworks are regular participants at the Waterford Institute of Technology Lean Forum which is the leading Lean Enterprise and Operational Excellence event in Ireland and Liam has hosted several breakout sessions over the past number of years. The company has built very strong ties with Waterford Institute of Technology with many of the staff holding degree or master level qualifications from the institute. Liam and Brian also participated in the formulation of the very successful Higher Diploma in Computer Science and they have hired 4 graduates from this program over the past number of years who are still with the company today. According to Brian “We believe that is important that local businesses provide a chance for students to grow and develop. Given the software skills shortage nationwide we need to provide opportunities for these skilled students to remain in Waterford, and the wider South East Region, once they graduate, or to return to the area in future years.”

Liam says “We are very proud of the fact that we are an indigenous software company that has grown through collaboration and partnership with our clients to be one of the leading providers of software related services to some of the biggest life science companies in the world from our base in Waterford. As the presence of these companies has increased so too has our relationship with them and in turn our company.”

If you would like to find out more about Dataworks and the software services and solutions that Dataworks offer to the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device secors Contact Us today.

 

*Content published in The Munster Express – July 4th 2017

 

To stay up to date with Dataworks Limited news and events, connect with us via the links below: