Shireburn Software has come a long way since it was first set up by John de Giorgio as an IT training company in 1983.
With a track record of development of a string of internationally successful software products, Shireburn continues to innovate and lead the market, developing applications aimed at specific niche business needs.
As the company celebrates its 35th anniversary did those behind it ever think it would have achieved so many milestones?
“In any business it is very difficult to predict the future landscape but in the technology sector this is even more challenging. Competition, external factors, massive shifts in technology and user expectations all change almost daily and one needs to adapt to remain relevant and to keep looking towards that next milestone.
“Shireburn has been successful at adapting to new technologies and opportunities to ensure our client’s success. It is about opportunity identification and choosing what to do and, almost more importantly, what not to do,” Mr de Giorgio, Shireburn managing director, tells The Sunday Times of Malta.
“We worked together with our staff members and kept on growing with our clients,” adds director Franco Galea.
A couple of years after Shireburn was set up the company started developing its own software solutions focusing primarily on freight, accounting, payroll, POS and inventory.
By 2001 the first global product, Integra for Notes, was launched, which led to the company winning a series of international awards. Integra’s portfolio included international heavyweights such as the US Air Force, Siemens, Coca-Cola and Volvo.
2005 saw the launch of Shireburn Business Suite as an integrated solution to manage business processes, leverage information and monitor performance. The product is scalable and can therefore be tailored to companies of any size.
In 2013 Concessionaire Analyzer+ airports edition was launched globally and a year after the shopping malls edition entered the global market too. CA+, as it is commonly known in the industry, was designed to manage and increase concession-based revenue within airports and malls. Last year, the software won the Revenue Generation Award from International Airport Review magazine and CA Plus Ltd was partly acquired by Gentrack Group – Veovo.
In 2015 Shireburn Indigo was launched, a cloud-based platform that enables local companies to manage payroll and leave administration via Indigo Payroll (winner of the MCA eBusiness Best B2B Application award).
We have always gone global with niche products aimed at very targeted markets
This year plans for Indigo Time and Attendance were announced and the solution will be launched early next year. Time & Attendance will compliment payroll and facilitate attendance management, as well as track and manage shifts and rosters.
Today, Shireburn Software has grown to 64 employees. What is the secret of the company’s success?
“I would say focus first of all. You need to be very clear about what you want to achieve, your vision and do a few things exceptionally well. You need to follow a strategy and align all of your steps with that strategy,” says Mr de Giorgio.
“In addition, you need to have an environment which gets the best out of people within the team. Employee satisfaction brings about client satisfaction – in our case the two are very strongly correlated. Building and keeping a strong team has been critical so as to ensure the success that Shireburn has achieved,” explains Mr Galea.
Mr de Giorgio says that keeping up with changing nature of IT has been a challenge that “we’ve embraced by investing heavily in skills and resources”.
“We’ve been through quite a journey – from the early days of the PC and now to cloud-based solutions. Many customers have been with us from the beginning and we have always continued to enable them to adopt to the latest opportunities and are now moving onto the cloud based solutions. We have never stopped investing and have never been complacent about our position in the market. We have always seen technology as a fast-moving train and aimed to stay ahead of what is happening. We never stop learning,” Mr Galea says.
Mr de Giorgio says his proudest achievement is seeing how the company’s staff have grown and developed over time “and have continued to take Shireburn on this journey.” He adds: “We have excellent staff retention levels. That is a great satisfaction.”
He also stresses his immense pride at the fact that Shireburn developed two global Number 1 software products, the most recent of which leads the airport non-aeronautical sector to manage concession-based revenues.
Mr de Giorgio adds: “Locally our team also makes us proud daily. The sheer innovation that comes out of our development team, coupled with the high customer service levels that our customers enjoy, are what count most.”
Mr Galea explains that the most recent achievements have been tied to the company’s cloud-based Shireburn Indigo Payroll solution, launched in 2016, winner of the MCA eBusiness B2B Application Award, with more than 2,000 companies today paying their staff through the platform and 37,000 employees’ being managed through its system.
“It is never easy to develop a new generation of software products while continuing to support your customers on the current generation,” he says.
Mr de Giorgio says the company has been successful on the international front “because we’ve always gone global with niche products aimed at very targeted markets.
“This enables us to establish a clear and focused unique selling proposition, and communicate this with our target audience. We’ve never gone global with a me-too product but rather ensured we had something unique to offer. We have also backed that up with consistent and heavy investments in marketing.”
Where does the company go from here?
“Our focus remains to empower our clients to manage their own businesses effectively. We measure our success through theirs,” Mr Galea says.
“We will continue to ensure that our clients are able to leverage new opportunities in technology, new ways of doing things and providing the high levels of support that Shireburn is renowned for.”