SWS gets seal of approval
And SWS Business Process Outsourcing Ltd in Bandon is doing a good job, according to the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, which oversees administration and expenditure of public money.
SWS BPO records more than two million cattle events per year as part of its processing of calf birth registrations, bovine passports, animal movement permits and on-farm livestock death notifications, for the Department of Agriculture and Food.
In 2004 they were paid €4.4 million for registration of calf births and bovine passport issues, and €995,000 for issue of cattle movement certificates and recording of on-farm death notifications.
The figures were revealed during a recent Oireachtas Committee of Public Accounts scrutiny of public spending by the Department of Agriculture and Food.
Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell said he was satisfied with the Department's controls over the registration, movement and deletion of livestock on its systems and its arrangements with SWS BPO's provision of data processing services.
This contract started in 1997. Now, SWS BPO processes more than 40,000 animal registrations per day during peak periods. Anyone registering an animal is guaranteed a three-day turnaround to return of a bovine passport. More than 40 million documents, both physical and electronic, are stored in the company's archives.
Business Process Outsourcing is one of five divisions of SWS Group, controlled by the Bandon, Barryroe, Dairygold, Drinagh and Lisavaird Co-ops, and 20% owned by the group's management.
SWS Group, which employs 375 permanent staff and 200 contract workers, and had sales of more than €30 million last year, ended merger talks last September with One51, the former IAWS Co-op.
Kieran Calnan, SWS's chief executive, said the company would seek outside funding for the first time, to progress its business plans, and would consider floating on the stock market.
