John de Giorgio | 30 years of software solutions

What products does your company produce?

Shireburn Software is a software products company that specialises in assisting clients in implementing improvements to their business processes and addressing these through practical and cost effective solution.

The company's main products are:

• The Shireburn Business Suite offering a fully integrated 360 degree solution for accounting, inventory, retail management and payroll/HR including an integrated eStore, Business Intelligence and Document Management facilities. This continues to be our core business.
• Concessionaire Analyzer+ and Airport.POS allow airports to leverage the returns from their retail and F&B operations and is marketed to airport terminals.
• The Shireburn Freight System supports freight companies and forwarders in managing their cycle from freight sales to bookings, documentation, reporting and statistics, container control and demurrage etc.
• Shireburn Vault provides automated on-line encrypted data backups for PCs, Mac and servers
• eSecurity and business continuity solutions addressing firewalls, web and email content filtering, malware control and even automated mirroring and replication of servers for automated fail-over of critical systems.
• Collaborative software for the web, Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Notes, spearheaded by Shireburn Business Tracker and the award winning Integra for Notes, linking IBM Notes with Microsoft Excel and Word for reporting and mail.

We also provide customised solutions addressing specific business processes and identifying opportunities to add value to the business, building transactional, web and collaborative environments.

Who is your target market?

Our portfolio of clients is diverse which is also a reflection of the horizontal nature of many of our products. We operate in almost all business sectors from retail and distribution to manufacturing, transport, financial and professional services and iGaming.  Any business looking to automate and integrate business processes, whilst reducing duplication of data entry and human error, is a potential client who can benefit greatly from our solutions.

Is the bulk of your business local or foreign?

Established in 1983 and with its operational base in Malta, Shireburn Software enjoys a blue-chip client base in 40 countries and spanning 19 time zones. Our core continues to be the local market, but as we invest in the development of new products together with a strong investment in human resources to grow our team of professionals, we continue to gain a share of the international market as well. Both are important to us.

Are your products aimed at big businesses only or do they include the little guy?

The beauty of all our software solutions is that they are scalable; not too cumbersome for the one-man hardware store, and yet sophisticated enough to grow with an organisation and service the needs of large corporates. By identifying business processes, and choosing only those modules relevant for that business, our solutions can be adapted to any business size. Our licensing and costs also scale down to the smaller operators. As a result our clients range from one-man band operations to some of Malta's larger enterprises

How do clients pick the best software solution for them?

Reputation of success in implementation and on-going support is everything in this business when you look at the long term. Business owners discuss with others in the same line of business and base a lot on recommendations. You'd want to choose a software company that is stable, established and successful with practical solutions.

Sometimes companies buy shiny looking packages only to find them very cumbersome to use, expensive to run and, with limited ability to adapt them, they can often constrain the business.

Much of your business processes will become reliant on the software, its continuity and updates. Switch to another software product can be time consuming so the choice is a long term commitment and one that is assessed with care. Often a company will base their decision on word of mouth and contact us directly, or we might be shortlisted with one or 2 other leading companies and asked to present our solutions.

Word of mouth is our best form of marketing. It is also something you continuously have to work at. We're lucky to have a great team supporting our clients the way they do.

What makes Shireburn Software packages more competitive than other brands?

Most of the time we are competing with international packages built to suit the needs of as many business types in as many countries as possible and following different accounting rules.  They can be cumbersome.  Shireburn's solutions are very practical and allow swift processing of operations. 

In addition, we are able to customise our solutions to meet client needs whereas many times external applications may need to be built, sometimes using Excel to meet specific client needs.

Another major advantage is the high levels of integration we offer between all aspects of accounting, retail, distribution, an eStore that directly links back to inventory and finance, salesman tablets, payroll, document management etc offering a company a very productive one-stop shop where all your IT and software requirements can be seen to as opposed to having to deal with various suppliers for different systems.

We've got over 30 years' experience with a track record that speaks for itself when it comes to technical ability and high levels of service and support to our clients.

The computer software market is ever changing. How has Shireburn remained competitive for 30 years?

I would ascribe Shireburn's ability to remain at the forefront of the industry for 30 years as a combination of innovation, excellent service, opportunity identification combined with a strategy of ignoring government tenders.

Continuous improvement and development is a must in our business. You have to be a step ahead of new ways of doing business so that you are ready to service clients when they need you to.  Being at the cutting edge while avoiding the bleeding edge.

The high levels of support and continuity we offer to our clients has also been one of our strongest assets. It is important not only to sell and install a solution, but support clients with training and continuous assistance for the long-term. This has enabled us to have an exceptionally high client retention level.

We also have very solid infrastructure of our own internal systems, obviously built by us, to support our growth. Examples are the automated updating of client systems when new releases are issued and our internal correspondence and action tracking systems.

What is Shireburn doing to celebrate 30 years in the market?

Shireburn has always taken up corporate social responsibility initiatives, giving back to our community.

This year, being our 30^th anniversary, we've made it a point to organise an activity each month, at times more. Some of these activities were aimed at staff such as social events and team building activities. We believe that it is important to keep a positive environment at the workplace, and after all, we owe our success to the team here at Shireburn. So it seems fit to show our appreciation for their dedication and hard work.

We've also embarked on a number of initiatives whereby we've played a small part in giving back to our community. We've planted 30 trees at the new Marsascala Family Park, and also donated blood to the National Blood Donation Unit this week. We continued to support the National Library and New Leaf with the sponsorship of a new lightbox to help with the assessment of conditions of historic books.

We strongly believe in CSR initiatives, not only for the good they do, but also for the personal sense of satisfaction that we feel individually when giving some of our time for others. We hope to keep up the rhythm and continue to embark on such initiatives for the rest of our 30^th year and as well as the years to come.

Are there any future projects in the pipeline?

We've always got projects in the pipeline! There can never be a time in software development where you are not looking years ahead.   We continue to invest heavily in our Shireburn Business Suite.  The recent document management extension, business intelligence and the eStore will continue to receive our attention deepening and broadening their capabilities.

We are also very excited by our airport projects where we are first to market worldwide with a solution for the airport retail sector. We are currently implementing in our 3^rd airport and are in various stages of discussions with airports around the world: check my frequent flyer miles. This is a great opportunity for us.

There is of course more to come which we are unable to disclose at this time.

Where do you see the company in the next few years?

I am convinced that with the management and staff currently at Shireburn, our vision and skill sets, Shireburn Software will continue to be a leader locally in the business software solutions sphere, and will also continue to gain ground internationally where we have also made a mark in the past few years. I expect us to have high visibility within the airports sector.

I also see the team expanding as Shireburn grows and more resources are required to continue to support our clients.