Brokers are tipping Staffware as a strong buy - a ringing endorsement for a software group that has reported profits for all but six months in the last 15 years, writes Karlin Lillington

Staffware - does the name ring a bell? For most people, the name of this 15 year old - and profitable - British technology company probably draws a blank.

And yet the company - which has half a dozen people in its Dublin sales office - has 5,000 customers and 1.5 million licensed users, employs 350 people in 16 countries, and has grown 600 per cent since it went public six years ago (initially on AIM, then a main listing - it is now a FTSE 350 member). Consensus at six major brokerages this week tips the shares as a "strong buy" or "buy". It has been profitable for all but one half-year period in its 15 years - surprisingly, the first half of 2001 rather than the post-9/11 second half.

The ungenerous might suggest that the reason Staffware isn't better known is that its software is, well, kind of boring. The company produces a complex software suite that automates and manages business processes, a type of program the company calls (surprise) business process management (BPM) software. The software also acts as a kind of digital duct tape, connecting the variety of computer systems that most large companies have into a more cohesive, information-sharing whole.

The taxonomy of BPM software is none too clear. It bears a close relationship to, and in some cases seems just to be another, newer name for a whole range of acronymic software with similar purposes: CRM (customer relationship management software), ERP (enterprise resource planning software), SCM (supply chain management software), and financial management software.

Some of these software sectors - dominated by big name companies such as Siebel Systems, Oracle, SAP and PeopleSoft - don't exactly warm the cockles of their customers' hearts. Analyst the Gartner Group estimates that up to 60 per cent of CRM installations fail.

This is partly due to the software's complexity - it has plenty of interesting and useful features but companies don't know how to make use of them and neither, it seems, do the resellers who install and configure the systems. It can also take up to two years to fine-tune a system - not exactly quick return on investment, (ROI).

However, Mr John O'Connell, the founder and chief executive of Staffware (his family hails from Cork: "Same place as Keane!" he says with a mischievous grin), believes his software successfully takes on the big names and shows a faster ROI. His chief technology officer, Mr Jon Pyke, says the software produces a "controlled and agile enterprise" - prompting visions of a pirouetting corporate behemoth, something like the dancing hippos from Fantasia.

BPM, says Mr O'Connell, is the growth area of enterprise software, outperforming clumsier and more confusing CRM and ERP programs. "We come in on budget, within schedule, and offer measurable business benefits," he says. Well, he would. But the performance of the company, and the comments of customers circulating at the company's annual conference in London last week, point to real achievement in this area and the promise of further market gains.

Certainly, analysts seem bullish on BPM at the moment, mainly because large organisations need to integrate their systems and, using that base, restructure so they can be more agile and responsive to an increasingly turbulent business climate. Where ERP or CRM or SCM goes after discrete divisions within an organisation, BPM knits together the whole enterprise, says Mr O'Connell. Gartner believes large corporations and organisations - from government departments to big banks - risk floundering unless they can streamline themselves in this way.

Mr O'Connell, who wears a simple name badge like all Staffware employees at his conference, bearing only his name and not his title, is engaging and prone to laughter and clearly enjoys talking about the company he formed more or less accidentally in the 1980s.

"I got into computing in the mid-1970s," he says, noting that his enthusiasm for mainframes but total lack of programming background meant he knew "nothing about computing but at least I could translate for management."

The large international company he worked for was so frustrated with its mainframe that it sent him out to find some other, non-computer based solution to its problems.

"So I recommended what I called 'automatic data-processing machines'." In other words - computers. He barks out a laugh. "In a way, they hired a gamekeeper and got a poacher. I got bitten by the computing bug."

The seeds of Staffware were created when he bought in a financial software package that didn't work. Better to work with programmers to fix it and make it do what he wanted than to sue the supplier, he decided, and he gradually fine-tuned it. Then he left the big company and turned his hand with his working partners to creating a program that could handle e-mail intelligently.

This was the mid-1980s, when e-mail was barely known within work environments. "By this time, the company was on its knees, because it's hard to sell a product when there's no demand for it." Mr O'Connell bursts into laughter again.

The turnaround came when a few big manufacturers like Unisys decided to incorporate the e-mail program into its office automation offering, he says.

Unisys told Mr O'Connell it needed the program to do things it could not then do - which "uplifted our vision". The fledgling Staffware "got more pragmatic, and by 1994 there was a sustainable business," he says.

By 1995, the company had a respectable £4 million in revenue and was doing deals with local authorities and enterprises such as British Telecom. The company floated in 1996, and revenue jumped to £10 million that year. They haven't looked back, and now supply their BPM software to organisations in the financial, utilities, telecommunications, government and insurance sectors, among others. Clients include ABN/AMRO, Vodafone, Bank of Ireland, AIB Bank, Citibank, and Abbey National.

"Since then, our business model has been much more evolutionary, rather than revolutionary," says Mr O'Connell. Despite rapid growth in the BPM sector - which Staffware claims to have founded - there's huge room for further market expansion, he says. "I still believe it's way, way under-utilised."

And certainly, the company remains under-recognised, most likely because although it is advancing steadily, it still has not broken the American market like better known European rival SAP. A recent US press release announcing a partnership with Siemens implies Staffware is an American company, never mentioning Staffware's British origins, and lists New York as its US main office.

Would he like the company to have better name recognition, outside its client markets? "Whether we need to be a public name? No. But would we like to be a better known brand?" muses Mr O'Connell. "Definitely."