THE ECONOMIC downturn may have brought doom and gloom to Irish businesses but Dublin-based OpenJaw Technologies has seen its business grow in the past year, and is expecting that growth to continue.
The travel software company, established in 2002, added 35 new jobs in the past year and is expecting to grow revenues in 2009 from the €9 million recorded last year.
OpenJaw supplies technology to help travel companies connect to different suppliers, such as airlines, rental companies and hotels.
OpenJaw started out in the Guinness Enterprise Centre with only a handful of employees and has since expanded, opening offices in Spain and following the acquisition of Traventec, in Galway. Staff numbers have increased to 120, with about 90 based in Dublin.
“Even in the downturn it’s important that we continue to invest in product development,” says chief executive John McQuillan. “Sometimes during a downturn when you invest in development, it’s the very time at which you can get a bit of a lead over your competitors because they often stop investing.”
OpenJaw’s chief executive is confident sales will continue to grow in the coming months. “Different companies take different approaches. It depends to some extent on their own cash positions. Some companies will react to the situation strategically, others react to it on a pure ‘baton down the hatches’ basis,” he said.
“We’ve found sales activity to still be very strong. Even in January we still have a lot of sales activity. A lot of customers and potential customers would look at this strategically, to see if there is an investment in technology that they can do that will help them to reduce their costs or help them in other areas.”
One sector that has proven strong for the company is ancillary revenues for airlines, where they want to link in to car rental or accommodation sales from their websites. The strength of the euro could prove a challenge for the company. After starting out by signing up American Airlines as a client, the firm now has customers in throughout the world, including Europe, the UK, Scandinavia, north America, Canada, Mexico, Australia and India.
“Generally speaking weve succeeded in doing most of our contracts in euro. We get paid in euro for most of or existing contracts. But looking forward the impact is that even if we continue to get paid in euro we may have to drop the euro pricing in the US market just to be competitive,” said Mr McQuillan.
“But at least when you are a software company, you have a little more control over it. We don’t have to buy in parts at a certain cost, and its easier for us in some ways to drop our price.”
