Rebate management blog - Page 34 - Enable

Stratford-upon-Avon based software development company Enable has made a £1 million investment into 7,000 sq ft of new freehold offices in the Stratford-upon-Avon Enterprise Park.

The Managing Director and 29 year old award-winning young entrepreneur Andrew Butt commented “This is a milestone for Enable—it is our first freehold headquarters! We see it as an investment for the future and key to our plans for continued growth.”

Denys Shortt, CEO of Enable commented “Enable is expanding and will have its best year in history this year. We are winning orders from big firms and employing locally with graduates from Warwick University.” He continues “We are also delighted to have had several banks offering us funding for our growth—a good sign that the banks are lending.”

Denys Shortt started Enable Software in 2000 with 16 year old Andrew Butt who he made the Managing Director. Since then Enable has grown to almost £2m sales and now has 24 employees.

1 min read

Directors of Enable have recently returned from a Study Tour to Silicon Valley. Organized and run by Mike and Linda Portlock of E-Vision Consulting Ltd, the focus of the Tour was �Transformative Technologies for Business IT�, exploring how emerging technologies can be deployed to help organizations build a better future.

The 2012 visit was the 16th annual IT Directors Study Tour organized by E-Vision Consulting, and was full of fascinating insight. We live in an age where empowering technologies are increasingly available first to individuals rather than to enterprises and institutions. Employees and customers are getting the good stuff first and this is increasing pressure on IT leaders.

Those involved in IT are used to rapid change but harsh economic conditions combined with new consumer focused technologies, such as mobile, social media and cloud, have created a new environment with fresh challenges for both IT and the business. It is inevitable that groundswell technologies will continue to shift information power to customers and employees. IT leaders must shift their mindsets for a world where technology projects can come from anywhere and IT is a key advisor, not necessarily the manager, on those projects. This power shift cannot be stopped, but IT leaders can take advantage of it.

3 min read

As a result of continued demand for Enable’s software development service, and consistent revenue growth, Enable will be exhibiting at two key events at Warwick University in May.

The first is the Warwick Summer Careers Fair on Tuesday 8th May. Organized by the Employer Connect team at Warwick, this event connects employers with students expecting to graduate imminently. Enable’s Managing Director, Andrew Butt, and Operations Director, David Hunt, will be attending.

The second event, also organized by Warwick’s Employer Connect, is a PhD network event on Thursday 10th May. Enable is privileged to be able to access this unique opportunity and discuss some specialist roles available to PhD graduates. This event will be attended by David Hunt and Dan Wood, an existing PhD graduate.

David Hunt commented "Enable is focussed on recruiting top talent. We recognise that in order to achieve this it’s about pitching ’the Enable difference’ to candidates and attracting people with a shared vision and values."

Enable is a keen supporter of promoting from within, and has successfully recruited, trained and developed many graduates over the past few years.

1 min read

Enable’s CEO Denys Shortt recently wrote an article for BBC News on his top tips for business survival. The article is reproduced below in full.

Denys Shortt is a former England under-21 hockey player, an entrepreneur and founder of DCS Europe plc and Enable Software, employing nearly 300 people. He is also chairman of the Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

My drive and determination comes from my England hockey days when I played centre forward, the goal scorer. I learned the hard way from my coaches—you were either scoring goals or you were dropped from the team!

I worked for my father for a few years and learned how family businesses have their challenges. I realized that to grow a really big business I had to think big. In just 15 years I have grown DCS Europe to sales of �130m and 250 employees.

I have not stopped there—I started a second business, with a 16-year-old, called Enable Software. This is now up to �2m sales and 20 employees.

7 min read

Enable have been shortlisted for Business of the Year at the Pride of Stratford 2012 awards. Enable’s CEO, Denys Shortt, has been shortlisted for the Entrepreneur of the Year and Citizen of the Year awards.

Judges have praised the outstanding quality of entries received for the inaugural Touch FM Pride of Stratford Awards 2012 with DCS.

After hours of deliberation, the judging panel confirmed the nominees who are in the final reckoning for an award. The ceremony, created and hosted by Touch FM (Stratford�s local radio station), will be presented at a glittering event in Stratford upon Avon on 17th February 2012. The night will reflect and recognize the best that Stratford District has to offer.

The judges have selected just 39 finalists from hundreds of applications. Each of the 13 categories (which include Business of the Year, Citizen of the Year and the Stratford�s Pride Award) has three finalists.

The Judges are: Gina Fusco (Head of Strategy and Marketing, NFU Mutual), Richard Egginton (CEO, Stratford Town Trust), and Steve Orchard (CEO, Touch FM). Cllr Stephen Thirlwell (Deputy Leader, Stratford-on-Avon District Council) attended on behalf of Cllr Chris Saint (Leader, Stratford-on-Avon District Council).

2 min read

Enable’s CEO, Denys Shortt was featured in the Daily Mail this week, in an article about Denys’s role as chairman of Coventry and Warwickshire LEP. The Mail’s article is shown below.

Denys is chairman of Coventry and Warwickshire LEP, one of the first such bodies to be approved by the Government. Denys, 47, is an entrepreneur who in 1994 founded DCS Europe, a beauty company that distributes brands including those made by Unilever and Procter & Gamble to more than 70 countries.

Local Enterprise Partnerships are the Government�s much vaunted replacement for the Regional Development Agencies, which were scrapped in the 2010 Budget. The new Government funded groups are intended to be led by business, for business. Since the concept was launched, 24 have been approved and set up.

The firm also sells its own range of beauty products called Enliven and turns over �130million a year.

Through the LEP, Denys hopes to provide local firms and entrepreneurs with the support they need to expand their businesses and deal with relevant issues, such as access to finance. The partnership has held regular focus groups, targeting business sectors from farming to automotive, as well as forums on issues including planning and skills. It also holds breakfast meetings for firms to tell of their concerns, while a conference in October was attended by 300 businesses.

3 min read

Enable has been a pioneer of Internet applications since its inception 12 years ago. We quickly recognised that physically installing software on every PC in an organization was not the way forward, as upgrades need to be carried out individually on each computer, computer-specific problems can be encountered, and users can only work on the specific PCs that have the software installed. On the other hand, browser-based applications can be accessed via a web browser from anywhere without requiring any local installation, and upgrades are carried out once in a central location.

Enable has focussed on developing browser-based applications that are fast to operate and easy-to-use for both the occasional and the expert user. A major goal has been to make browser-based applications as ‘feature rich’ as the desktop, and this has been largely achieved in recent years.

In the past, a potential downside of browser-based applications has been that they require a reliable Internet connection to operate. However, Enable has recently completed development projects where this is not so. Utilising HTML5, Enable can develop applications with functions that can be accessed and used with only intermittent connectivity. When an Internet connection becomes available, data is able to synchronise between the user’s device—PC, smartphone, tablet—and the central server that hosts the application.

3 min read

On a star studded evening of entrepreneurs in London—including James Caan, Julie Meyer and Will King—the Growing Business Awards celebrated the best of British Business. Created by Real Business and the CBI in 1999, the Growing Business Awards are the most established recognition for UK independent and entrepreneurial businesses.

This year’s event kicked off the first Global Entrepreneurship Week, where enterprise activity is being championed across the world.

A new award for ‘Local Hero of Enterprise’ was won by Denys Shortt, founder of DCS Europe and Chairman of the Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership.

Declan Curry, presenter for BBC Business News, announced the award:

“Former England Hockey player, highly successful entrepreneur and proud son of Stratford-upon-Avon, Denys Shortt commits himself to a huge array of local community projects—from supporting the town’s football club to mentoring business owners to launching an ambitious new project to place helipads on rooftops alongside accident and emergency wings.”

2 min read