Software company Emydex is a ten-year-old software company, and now a three-in-a-row winner in the Deloitte Fast 50, placed at 17 with a revenue growth rate of 400 percent.
Emydex pictured with the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Richard Bruton, TD, earlier in 2014
Its products are aimed at the food processing sector, from raw material arrival and slaughtering, through factory floor operations to traceability compliance and multi-site reporting. It is unique in having specialised solutions for sub-sectors such as beef, lamb, pork, poultry, fish and the pre-retail processing of products from them.
“We currently have 70 plants using our software in Ireland, Britain, France and Namibia and Botswana in Africa,” said Emydex chief executive David McMahon. “In most cases our clients are food groups, so there are four sites in Namibia and three in Botswana. Our clients are something of a ‘who’s who’ of food groups, certainly to Irish eyes, including Kerry Foods, Dawn Meats, Kepak, Moy Park, Dunbia Group, Slaney Foods, Liffey Meats and Rockabill Shellfish.
Emydex systems work with about 70 percent of core platform software in common, McMahon said. A further 20 per cent or so is tailored to the specific vertical sub-sector and at least 10 per cent in all cases that is tailored to the particular client and even site.
“This is what underpins one of our key selling points internationally. We can integrate seamlessly with whatever enterprise systems the client has already invested in, typically some of the big ERP products like Microsoft Dynamics. Our place is lower down, right on the production floor to capture key production data that feeds upwards to a central management system.”
At a higher but still sector-specific level, Emydex covers plant management fields such as yields and costings, quality management, recipe management (formulation) and production planning. It also integrates with complimentary systems areas such as warehouse management, cold storage and logistics.
“Most of our installations are on-premise and deployed, supported and updated from our Dublin head-office,” Said McMahon.
“We also offer a cloud solution, which some clients have embraced. Cloud is also the medium for our own software development and testing. Ironically, it then offers a perfect drop-in solution for on-premise deployments, which are already tailored and tested to the client and site specifications. Then we simply drop the total package onto the client’s local server.”
Emydex is currently targeting other overseas markets, notably the US, Canada and Australia, where it has local partners in place, as well as South Africa.
Details of the final Technology Fast 50 ranking list are available to download at www.fast50.ie