Bgate Technology, an emerging company based in Media Cube, the campus-based new business centre in Dún Laoghaire, has won the Systems Integration Company of the Year Award at the ICT Excellence Awards 2010 for its order-capture and invoicing system.
The brainchild of former Riverdeep technical director Simon Lunt, the Bgate software is called Smart Business and connects buyers and suppliers over the web while eliminating replication of entry across the supply chain.
According to Lunt this is eliminating unnecessary tasks for their customers and increasing efficiencies by several orders of magnitude.
Industrial design background before Riverdeep
After graduating with a degree in industrial design from the National College of Art and Design and the University of Limerick, Lunt went to work for design firm Hood Associates.
There he learned to master computer-aided design and helped to design consumer devices for global companies. After three years we went to work for Irish e-learning firm CBT Systems, which later became Smart Force. He also worked as a graphic and multimedia designer before helping to found Riverdeep, the educational software company, in 1996.
He worked there for three years and left to pursue other interests shortly before Riverdeep completed its stock market listing. He says he has tried to adopt much of the design ethos from his Riverdeep experience to suit Bgate, specifically with regard to usability.
System now in operation
The Bgate system is now in operation and John O’Connor, CFO for Burger King’s 27 restaurants in Ireland says: “Bgate’s Smart Business exports directly into our accounts system. We no longer have valuable staff time tied up with the monotonous task of manually inputting thousands of invoices each month.”
Bgate is now negotiating with over 50 Irish-based organisations that want to use the system and plans are underway to roll out the system internationally.
Sorcha Corcoran, Bizstartup.ie
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