In the 1980s, Guinness was a diversified group with interests in a number of areas from oyster farms to cruisers on the river Shannon. Rainsford Computing was part of its portfolio and Alex Dunne and Kevin Taylor were two of its young software developers. When Guinness decided to focus on core competencies, Rainsford was one of the casualties.
Dunne and Taylor combined forces to set up Wellington IT and, over the last 30 years, the Belfast-based company has grown slowly but steadily. It now employs 55 people in Dublin, Cork and Belfast.
Wellington’s initial product was software to manage the flow of goods in the wholesale drinks industry. This still accounts for about 40 per cent of turnover today but has been overtaken by the company’s software systems for credit unions. Dunne looks after the credit union side of the business while Taylor takes care of the drinks industry.
The bulk of Wellington’s credit union customers are in Ireland, with a small number in Scotland, while customers for its drinks software are in Ireland and Britain.
Wellington first became involved with credit unions around 1990 and is one of the largest indigenous software suppliers to the sector. Its customer base comprises about 150 credit unions with roughly 1.2 million members and assets of about €7 billion between them. Earlier this year Wellington moved into Munster, buying a competitor in Cork and establishing a new support office there.
“We decided it was preferable not to have all of our eggs in one basket,” said Dunne. “We were very familiar with enterprise resources planning software and big-database development, so it was a question of finding a niche and applying our expertise. We decided to leverage our technical business systems skills to benefit credit unions and have built a sophisticated system that matches, and in some cases outperforms, what mainstream banks are using.”
Although the recession has been hard on credit unions here, rationalisation has worked in Wellington’s favour. The company has grown in the downturn as its systems can be used in credit unions of all sizes.
“Our view is that all credit unions should have access to the best technological capabilities possible that meet real business needs,” said Dunne.
“This has led to the development of Scion, a fully integrated automated software that is changing how credit unions do business and offering a real alternative to traditional banking. With Scion, credit unions can offer members services such as automated text alerts, online banking, smartphone apps, ATM facilities and full access to national clearing.”
Tougher regulatory, compliance and data security requirements have put many credit unions under pressure, said Dunne.
“They have to keep up with so many rules it has become a full-time job. Technology that is light on its feet can really help. As the sector continues to contract, the credit unions that remain will get bigger and technology will play an increasingly pivotal role,” he said.
Dunne and Taylor have taken a conservative approach to running Wellington and have been content with organic growth.
“We’ve been naturally cautious but it means we have a very solid foundation that can support our continuing growth,” said Dunne.
Wellington has been willing to think outside the box when needed, however. In the mid- 1990s, staffing became a big issue. Wellington was training developers only for them to be headhunted by boomtime companies willing to pay above the odds.
“At one point we had lost nearly a third of our staff to better-paying positions. You couldn’t blame the young people for going but it was a huge blow to a company of our size,” said Dunne.
“To try to protect ourselves in the future, we decided to ‘grow our own’ talent and began looking for people who had successful careers in other areas and wanted a change. Developing computer systems is very creative because you’re making a model that doesn’t already exist. Getting different perspectives feeding into the process has proved very productive. We have a dentist, a barrister, a bookie, a psychologist and an archaeologist, to name a few, and they are all very smart people who do an extremely good job. There’s another skills shortage now and we will be taking the same approach to recruitment.”
The company never stops refining its products, said Dunne. “We don’t have the monopoly on good ideas and are always open to input. We have developed apps for sales reps in the drinks industry to use on their iPads and, last year, we launched our first app for credit unions. “We were also first out of the blocks in getting Sepa [the Single European Payment Area] set up for credit union customers.
“Credit unions don’t generally have big IT departments so our system has to do a lot of things for them automatically,” he added. “The credit union movement may be under pressure at the moment but it will never die out. Rather it will get stronger and come closer to competing with the banks on an equal footing.
“The challenge for us is to partner with our customers to provide them with systems that can do this.”
