Identifying unique opportunities and following them through with fresh thinking sets these companies apart, writes Ciaran Brennan.
EVERY YEAR, IRISH PEOPLE donate millions of euro to charities and NGOs. But just where does the money go? It's a question that a company in the North aims to answer.
Cashtrail has developed software to enable NGOs and charities to provide donors with transparency on how their contributions are spent. The software is specifically written to meet the needs of NGOs in budgeting, recording expenditure and preparing donor reports.
The Enniskillen-based company was set up by Olivia Cosgrove, a chartered accountant who has worked in high-profile humanitarian and development operations overseas since 1995.
"Basically, it gives transparency from dollar to deed," she says. "It is designed to track the money from when the donor gives it to when it is spent on a project. It takes pressure off NGOs in terms of number crunching and accountability."
Transparency and accountability are becoming increasingly important among charities and NGOs amid accusations of bureaucracy, wastage and high administration costs.
Keeping track of donations can be difficult - currently, the charity sector in Ireland is unregulated, which means that there is no reliable information on the number of active charities, what their financial worth is and how they spend their funds.
The Charities Bill 2007, which will establish a new independent charities regulatory authority and which will require charities to supply annual activity reports to the authority, was presented to the Dáil on April 24th, but was put on hold in the run-up to the recent general election.
Charityfacts.org, a website which was set up to provide high-quality and impartial information about the sector in the UK, advises donors to ask the charity what it spends on administration or to check its annual accounts and, if appropriate, ask them to justify their performance.
While it says it would be concerned about a charity spending more than 15 per cent on management and administration, it equally warns against charities which claim to spend very little on these areas as their work is increasingly complex, managing networks of staff and volunteers in many countries. Administration expenses in most Irish charities are around 3-6 per cent. Goal's John O'Shea says that his charity has consistently managed to keep its cost base lower than 5 per cent.
To provide complete transparency and to ensure that money raised is not wasted in its various fields of operations, the charity employs qualified financial people on the ground.
"We would be one of the few agencies that have a qualified chartered accountant working in every field we are involved in," O'Shea says.
Invention born out of necessity
Running out of baby food when he and his wife were baby-sitting their niece provided the spark for Ulrik Bagge-Hansen to set up his baby food company, Chill Baby. When his niece refused to eat the jars of baby food on sale in the local supermarket, Bagge-Hansen decided to cook his own baby food for her.
That led the Danish native to consider establishing a company making his own baby food. Although he was still studying for a masters in business studies at the Smurfit Business School, Bagge-Hansen set up Chill Baby in 2003.
Chill Baby, which is based in Dublin, makes fresh, 100 per cent organic baby food. Its savoury dishes are suitable from weaning to 16 months, are free from additives and preservatives, have no added sugar or salt and are GM-free. The baby food is guaranteed fresh as it is cooked to order three times a week and has a shelf/fridge-life of 14 days from the date of manufacture.
While the venture got assistance from Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland in terms of grants for feasibility studies and product research, Bagge-Hansen sold his house in Cork to finance the business.
The company has gone national, selling in Dunnes, Tesco and Superquinn and now has nine varieties.
Hitting the marketplace
Dublin-based drug development firm Merrion Pharmaceuticals has come a long way in a short time. Founded just three years ago, the company has already signalled its intention to launch on the Nasdaq market in the United States and on the Irish Enterprise Exchange in Dublin.
It was set up in 2004 by venture capitalist company Growcorp to capitalise on a number of patents and drug delivery technologies that had been acquired from Elan.
Merrion specialises in developing oral dosage forms of drugs that are poorly absorbed, essentially converting drugs that are currently injected to tablet form to be taken orally.
It is currently working on four products and it said the proceeds of the forthcoming flotation would be used to fund clinical trials, including its treatments for bone cancer, prostate cancer and deep vein thrombosis.
It also said it may use a portion of the proceeds to license, acquire or invest in complementary businesses, products or technologies.
The company's progress has been rapid. Last year, it received a licence from the Irish Medicines Board to manufacture investigational medicinal products for human trials at its manufacturing facility in Trinity College. This was followed by two separate rounds of funding - one in April when it raised €6 million, while a further €8 million was raised last November.
At the beginning of this year, it announced positive clinical results for its osteoporosis drug.
Setting up a smart home
When friends Sean Gallagher and Derek Roddy were buying new houses five years ago, they were both amazed and disappointed that the technical detail in the houses amounted to little more than a phone point and a TV point. Their plans to install a home office and a sound system would mean having to drill holes in walls and remove skirting boards in their new houses.That dissatisfaction led to them setting up Smarthomes to revolutionise the way new homes access existing and emerging technology.
Smarthomes install modern cabling and technology systems in new homes, providing home owners with access to a wide range of communication and entertainment services. At the heart of the system is the streamlined Smart Connection Centre, from where all incoming telephone, broadband and TV services are distributed to each room. The range of services also includes PC networking, aerial, cable and satellite TV, wall-mounted plasma and LCD screens, home cinema surround sound, multi-room audio, programmable mood lighting, CCTV, provision for home office and remote control of heating via a mobile telephone.
"The system eliminates the need for future re-cabling, re-chasing of walls and unsightly cables tacked to skirting boards as home owners try to gain access to services in different rooms," says Smarthomes chief executive, Sean Gallagher.
"The advantage for property developers is that it adds value, increases profits, helps sell homes more quickly and differentiates units from those of other developers," he says.
In December 2004, Smarthomes won the All-Island Intertrade Ireland Seedcorn competition, from a field of more than 450 firms across the island, receiving a prize fund of €100,000. In February 2005, the company won Innovator of the Year from the Small Firms Association. In 2005/2006 the company also won the Deloitte Rising Star Award for New Technology Companies in Ireland.
In December 2006, Smarthomes announced a planned €10 million expansion which will create 100 jobs, bringing staff numbers to 150 by the end of 2008.
