Bray looks to build second software empire

THE former co-owner of Stockport-based business software firm Version One is gearing up to grow his second fortune in the sector.

Tony Bray, the former sales & marketing director of Version One, who owned half of the company alongside founder Derek McGain until a sale to CedarOpenAccounts in 2007, has now begun embarking on drumming up sales for his latest venture, Intuitive Business Intelligence.

Intuitive is a business intelligence software system that provides a “dashboard” allowing CEOs and managers to take an overview for all the data being produced by a company in real time.

Bray said that the system uses data fed in by accounting software systems, CRM systems, HR systems and other important sources of business information to produce graphical snapshots involving “traffic light” warning systems or bar charts.

If a CEO then needs to examine any of the information further, they can drill down into details provided by each of the various systems used.

Bray said that the system has been in development for two years, but Intuitive was only formed last year and the recruitment of field and marketing staff had only recently begun as the company prepared for a major product rollout.

He co-founded the business, which is currently headquartered in North Yorkshire, alongside Capture Projects founder Roger Stocker (who is a non-executive director) and technical director Edward Smith.

Intuitive currently employs 14 staff and has just secured a contract with IT firm Concorde and Bray said that it hopes to announce a deal with a major user in the higher education sector within the next few weeks.

Bray said: “I’m pleased to welcome Concorde IT Group to our fast-growing client base. Like many organisations, they’ve previously relied on reports and spreadsheets that were out of date as soon as they were produced.

“Using Intuitive Dashboards, they will now benefit from a graphical, real-time view of their management information, which will vastly improve the speed and accuracy of their decision-making and allow them to focus more time on running their business.“

CEO of Concorde IT Group Colin Meakin said: “I’m delighted that we’re implementing Intuitive Dashboards. As a rapidly-expanding company, we recognise that we need to spend less time reviewing reports and spreadsheets and more time running our business. “