A Maltese businesswoman is winning prestigious awards for her software company. Tech Sunday meets Angela Wood.
A businesswoman who comes from two of Malta’s oldest families has seen her UK-based software company earn a string of important awards. Angela Wood is the daughter of the late Marquis John Apap Bologna and the late Marchioness Elizabeth née Cassar Torregiani. She runs Sciencesoft Ltd, a software company based in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband Lindsay Wood and brother-in-law William Wood.
We chatted with Her Majesty and she was very interested in my links with Malta
Sciencesoft Ltd business, which produces world-leading 2D and 3D visualisation software for the global oil and gas industry, has been recognised with a highly prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category.
The firm was also awarded the John Logie Baird Award for Innovation for one of its hugely popular software products.
A trio of plaudits this year was completed when the company won the Best Performing Business Award for its category in the Glasgow Business Awards 2011 organised by the city’s Chamber of Commerce.
Lindsay Wood and his brother William, both physicists, founded the company in the late 1990s. They launched S3GRAF, the company’s flagship product for the oil and gas industry, in 2000.
Angela Wood is Sciencesoft’s business development director overseeing the company’s thriving maintenance and support department which takes care of Sciencesoft’s customers in more than 80 countries worldwide. She is also involved in key account development and the future growth strategies of Sciencesoft, as well as coordinating contracts with international clients and agents.
After receiving an Overseas Research Scholarship from the UK, Wood completed a Ph.D in Biochemistry at St Andrew’s University in Scotland. She worked in Malta, Switzerland and in the UK, firstly in the pharmaceutical industry and then in business development for a medical publishing house, before helping to found Sciencesoft.
“This year has been a very significant year for the business with this string of awards,” said Dr Wood.
“Securing a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in recognition of our overseas sales performance is a fantastic tribute to the efforts of our entire team. We remain focused on producing world-class software products for our existing and new clients, enabling them to make faster and more informed planning and development decisions.
“We work in a fast-moving and constantly changing business world and we’re delighted to receive the award.”
Wood and her husband had the honour of being invited to Buckingham Palace for a reception hosted by the Queen and Prince Philip.
“We chatted with Her Majesty and she was very interested in my links with Malta,” said Wood. “It was also an excellent opportunity to network with the other Queen’s Award winners.”
With her strong family links – two brothers and a sister living in Malta – Wood and her family make frequent visits to the island where she grew up and where she was educated at The Convent of the Sacred Heart and De La Salle College.
In simple terms, Sciencesoft’s Reservoir Simulation Suite of products helps engineers analyse the results from reservoir simulators by quickly producing 3D images of a company’s oil or gas field, enabling engineers to make multi-million dollar field planning and development decisions. Reservoir simulators are the main prediction tools used by engineers in petroleum companies to forecast future oil and gas production.
Such is the power and flexibility of the software that major oil and gas companies have now adopted Sciencesoft’s Reservoir Simulation Suite as standard.
As a company, Sciencesoft has achieved an annual growth rate of 25 per cent since 2002. This growth has been sustained during the last two years, bucking the trend during the UK’s recessionary period. The business has also increased its team of high-end technical specialists by six in the last two years.
Sciencesoft sells its products and services to over 120 companies based in 80 countries and its clients include many of the world’s major oil and gas producing companies. Overseas sales account for 90 per cent of the company’s turnover.
As well as Sciencesoft’s success in sales, the company’s technical success was also recognised when it won a prestigious John Logie Baird Innovation Award early in 2011.
This award was won for its newest software package, S3GRAFHPG, which allows reservoir engineers to load large simulation data files, which had previously taken over one hour to load, in a matter of seconds. This ensures the highest levels of user efficiency.
Sciencesoft works closely with a number of key universities offering summer work placements for students, providing advisory and mentoring services and sponsorship opportunities for new Ph.D students. The company also provides universities around the world with free-to-use software for undergraduate and graduate students, for research purposes.
Sciencesoft currently supplies one world-leading product line, but it aims to develop an additional four exciting new product lines in the next five years. Future plans also include developing new sales territories, a doubling of the workforce and expansion into larger business accommodation.
“We’re very focused on growing the company and have a clear strategy in place aimed at making a significant impact on our market sector,” said Wood.