In Short

A round-up of today's other stories in brief

BriteBill talking to other firms as 3 signs up for its bill-pay software

BriteBill has won a contract with mobile operator 3 Ireland to provide it with its web-based bill presentation and payment software. 3 will use BriteBill’s system, which was deployed in just six weeks, to enable its business customers to view, analyse and pay their bills online.

BriteBill is the company behind GetItKeepIt.com, a website which aggregates consumer bills in a single place so that they can manage their finances better. Chief executive Alan Coleman said the company was now focusing on providing the technology it had developed for GetItKeepIt to telecoms and utilities firms as a web service. 3 is the first contract it has signed but Mr Coleman said the company is in advanced negotiations with other large companies.

BriteBill secured seed funding of €400,000 from Enterprise Ireland and angel investors last May but Mr Coleman said it would shortly close a round of venture capital funding.

Worst IT cuts have been made - survey

The worst of companies’ slashing of technology budgets may be over according to a survey of Irish chief information officers (CIOs) carried out by Deloitte.

Last year almost 60 per cent of CIOs expected their budgets to be cut by 20 per cent in 2010, with 6 per cent predicting even bigger cuts. While this year 58 per cent expect a decrease in 2011 budgets, 47 per cent are optimistic that this will be a more modest cut of less than 10 per cent. The research found that 38 per cent of CIOs believe the rest of their organisation views the technology function as “adding value” to the business. While this was an improvement on the 24 per cent recorded last year, Deloitte said this indicated IT departments were not fully demonstrating their value to the rest of the business.