Aspira keeps the promises it makes

After Pat Lucey and his colleague Colum Horgan were made redundant in early 2007, they decided to set up their own IT company.

“I remember when I was clearing my desk, I dug out my original CV and cover letter from when I had applied for the job,” says Lucey.

“And it said that I would like to start up my own company some day. So it was always there, but I just got caught up in the job, getting project after project through.

"I spent more time in downtown Chicago than in downtown Cork back then." The two men called the new company Aspira Con as they aspired to conquer.

Their business idea was to use the knowledge they had acquired at the multinational IT company they used to work for before it closed its operation here.

They would supply IT products to companies, focusing on the energy, financial and medical devices sectors, which all needed customised software and IT maintenance advice.

IT connections

Lucey, Horgan and four other colleagues were experienced in software development and project management from years of work at the same multinational company, so they were well-poised to start. They also now had the advantage of former colleagues dispersed around the country as their IT connections.

But they had no knowledge of the difficulties they would soon have to face.

The first year went well, but everything changed for Aspira Con in 2009.

“We were working for a lot of local authorities, and they just stopped spending,” says Lucey. “So we had to make changes. Everyone took pay cuts and employees took time off voluntarily and extended leave to make sure we got by.”

New approach

Although the business had begun as an IT product company, they quickly noticed that their IT expertise was in demand, so they changed their approach, offering end-to-end services, maintenance and advice.

“I like to call us an enterprise IT company,” Lucey says.

The company also increased the range of services on offer. “Microsoft was pushing SharePoint [cloud-based team collaboration software] at the time, so we partnered them and had an extra product that we could customise for our clients,” he says.

A project management training programme that Aspira Con had set up a year earlier for members of the public and Aspira Con employees, was extended to include business analysis and, later, IT.

The students were trained to international certification.

Offering training to Aspira Con’s own staff too also acted as an incentive for their employees to stay with the company with the assurance that there was the potential to progress within the company.

Aspira, which is certified by both the Project Management Institute and the International Institute of Business Analysis, also ran free training days for jobseekers during the recession, with the company hiring three of those jobseekers afterwards.

Lucey’s entrepreneurial eye comes from his parents, who owned a shop, a petrol station and a café in Patrickswell, Co Limerick, in the 1960s. They instilled in Lucey the importance of client service and innovation. “My dad was always into gadgets: he bought the first ice cream cone machine, so we were selling whipped cones before anyone else did, and they were a huge attraction and had people travelling for miles to get a 99,” he says. “We also don’t make promises to clients that we can’t keep. If a client comes asking us to do the impossible, we’ll look at it from all angles, but we won’t agree to it unless we can deliver.

Different supplier

“Back in 2008, we told one company that we couldn’t do what they asked because it was impossible,” Lucey says. “They went to a different supplier who promised they could do it, but it all ended in tears and now that company is back with us working on a project.”

Last month, the company merged with IT services firm B-Tec Solutions to form the more succinct Aspira.

The company has clients in the public and private sector in such places as Texas, California and Germany as well as Ireland.

With the company growing by at least 50 per cent year-on-year, it is looking at doubling the number of staff over the next two years and at the possibility of opening an office in the UK.

“We aim to become not just a national, but an international brand,” says Lucey.

Aspira’s next move is to sponsor Cork City FC in the hope that their winning streak continues and this month Aspira will have its logo stamped onto Rebel jerseys.

“My only regret is not doing it all sooner,” says Lucey, of his choice to start the company.