Number crunchers hungry for success

The introduction of the single European payment area (Sepa) is bringing significant changes to the banking sector and creating opportunities for Cork-based data analytics company Nomos Software.

Since 2012, and in conjunction with Finnish partner XMLdation, Nomos has been selling a data analytics solution to banks in Europe, which are using it to help their corporate customers to comply with new Sepa requirements.

“The deadline for migration to Sepa is Feb 2014 and this has been driving the business,’’ says CEO and co-founder Tricia Balfe. “The solution is being used in Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, and France.”

Ms Balfe says sales for the first six months of this year have already exceeded total sales for 2012, and she anticipates that Nomos will continue to win new customers for its Sepa-related products over the next year or two.

Part of the company’s plan is to use the traction gained under Sepa and sell other data analytics products to the companies that are already using its software.

Nomos’ area of expertise is in providing data analysis solutions to ensure regulatory compliance, and to test data quality.

Nomos has been in existence since 2007, when Ms Balfe and David Garry used their redundancy payments from Motorola to get the company started.

They saw a gap in the market for a specialist data analytics company to

provide solutions to the financial sector.

Carrying out market research and product development for the first few years, the founders funded the company by doing some contract software development work and received some support from the South Cork Enterprise Board.

Ms Balfe also took part in the Enterprise Ireland-backed Genesis Enterprise Programme at CIT.

By 2010, the first product was ready for market but the recession made the market extremely difficult for the company.

Following up some international leads, Nomos set up a distribution agreement with a US software vendor and began selling to a US bank. Also in 2010, it signed a partnership agreement with the Finnish company.

“XMLdation handles sales and marketing and we are a technical partner,’’ says Ms Balfe, adding that the Finnish company sells to a number of large banks throughout Europe.

In 2012, Nomos’ founders sought funding to grow the business and received €250,000 from Kernel Capital through the Bank of Ireland Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund, as well as €250,000 from Enterprise Ireland, which identified the company as a high-potential start-up.

“This made a huge difference — the money allowed us to hire staff, travel to international events, and improve our visibility” says Ms Balfe, adding that the company had boot-strapped its development for the first five years.

Based at the Rubicon Centre at CIT, Nomos is using the funding to increase its penetration of international financial sector companies and for ongoing R&D

While the major share of revenue is now coming from the Sepa compliance software, Nomos has developed data analytic software for other uses.

“Data analytic software can be used to significantly reduce the cost of software integration,” says Ms Balfe, adding that Nomos software can also be used to analyse both financial and telecommunication data

Although Nomos is a still a small start-up company, Ms Balfe says she sees significant growth opportunities, since it is one of only a small number of companies specialising in the area of data analytics offering its product on a software as a service basis.

“Large organisations have proved willing to work with a small Irish company because of our specialist expertise,” she says. “We now have the opportunity to sell other products to these large organisations.”

Ms Balfe says the growth of online services is also creating opportunities for Nomos, since its solutions can be used to troubleshoot problems when a customer integrates into supplier IT systems.

“When things go wrong troubleshooting and resolving the issues can be difficult and costly,” says Ms Balfe. “Customer support teams can use our software to help them analyse data sent in by customers and determine the cause of problems.”

Support teams at banks are now using Nomos data analysis software to support customers through Sepa migration, and Ms Balfe predicts good growth in the future, selling the software for use in providing customer support in a variety of areas.