Gary and I have been friends since 1988. Over the past 20 years we’ve separately built business’s both organically and through acquisitions so we’re very familiar with the high’s and low’s, the risks and the rewards.

We were both fortunate to ‘exit’ from our previous business’s successfully so when we founded Celaton in 2005 we not only had a clear vision of what we wanted to achieve, we had funds and valuable experience too.

I had the opportunity to reflect on this recently after we announced our first real profits following five years of consistent growth, a great milestone to achieve.

The journey hasn’t always been straight and smooth. Along the way there were times when we questioned our strategy. For example, in 2007 we changed the way we sold our software by license to software as a service (SaaS). Giving up the comfort of an advance payment for smaller monthly amounts on a pay as you go basis was a hard pill to swallow for at least a year.

Reviewing the numbers was a sobering thing too. We’ve invested over £2m in the development of our technology and spent over £6m to get where we are today. Despite financial pressures we did it without equity funding.

“Profit”… It may be the mark by which financial success is measured but it isn’t the only thing we seek:

Our technology

We’re a software company so you’d expect us to be proud of what we’ve created. The fact is inSTREAM™ shines above everything else not just because of its capabilities but in the way it is delivered.

Our management & staff

You just can’t recruit a lot of individuals and expect them to be a team. It’s taken many years of working together, learning from mistakes and successes, but we’re very lucky to have a proven, committed, experienced and expert team who deserve most of the credit.

Our customers

We didn’t do focus groups, we just listened to our customers and came to understand their business needs. They really are our greatest asset and their continued success is evidence of our ability to deliver tangible results every day.

In reality, it is our customers success and their story that we seek.