It’s why the work of West Cork company Spearline is so important and has seen the firm grow rapidly in recent years.

Spearline provides telecommunications applications to assure quality and connectivity solutions, that allow organisations to provide an excellent customer experience to their customers.

The firm monitors toll and toll-free numbers for connectivity and audio quality. They support a range of business sectors, such as large enterprises, telco carriers, and other applications where the connection with customers is of paramount importance.

Spearline equips the likes of Google, Airbnb, Zoom, and Mastercard, with technology to allow them to stay connected with their customers and employees at all times, regardless of where in the world they are located.

All this work is carried out by Spearline from its headquarters in Skibbereen. The company was founded in 2003. In December the company announced the multimillion-euro acquisition of Israeli real-time communications solutions developer testRTC.

Last month, Spearline said it planned to double its workforce, hiring 106 people to bring its total workforce to 250 by the end of the year. The new roles will cover the areas of customer engagement, finance, HR, marketing, operations, product engineering, and sales.

The new hires will include at least 38 in Ireland, with the possibility of more job announcements here. As part of the expansion, one of many of the company’s goals is to establish a multi-state team in the US, capable of covering all regions where new and current customers operate.

Along with Skibbereen, the company currently has another base in Waterford and offices in Ahmedabad, India, and Bucharest in Romania.

Pre-pandemic, Spearline required prospective staff members to be based at one of its four global locations. However, advancements to the hybrid working model have enabled the company to recruit talent globally.

Spearline also has a presence in Romania and counts the likes of Zoom and Mastercard as clients. Its latest expansion follows its recent acquisition of testRTC, a company based in Israel.

Spearline chief executive and co-founder Kevin Buckley said they were honoured to be a finalist in the large company category at this year’s Cork Company of the Year Awards.

“This award recognises the hard work and efforts each member of the Spearline team have made in recent years in growing and expanding the company to the success that it is today,” he said.

“I am very proud of the fact that Spearline is now one of the largest employers not only in West Cork, but in the whole of Cork county, and we continue to grow and expand the company to meet customer and new market demand.”

Altada aims to get AI working alongside humans

While artificial intelligence (AI) has become somewhat of a buzzword for many companies, Cork firm Altada is making it a reality by helping companies make real sense of the huge volumes of data they gather.

Founded by Allan Beechinor and Niamh Parker in 2017, the firm initially focused on the financial services sector but the innovations the company has developed have the potential to disrupt other sectors including health tech, security, travel, entertainment and sports.

The document processing portion of the global $17,000bn mortgage industry is mired in inefficiencies with documentation for a single mortgage requiring multiple documents, which in total often run to several hundred pages.

Previously, the industry relied on humans for manual data entry and review of documents. While the ability to scan and digitise documents has been around for a long time, the recent development of natural language processing and related machine learning techniques allow Altada AI to “understand” what it’s reading and determine which fields are required, such as the mortgage amount, rate of interest and legal caveats.

In a highly regulated industry with a requirement for precision, Altada’s technologies minimise low-value monotonous work, helping human employees focus on high-value decisions. The company’s database has created positive outcomes on hundreds of thousands of mortgage, loan, title compliance and collateral defect documents.

The innovation is set to transform not just the mortgage industry, but digitisation and intelligent document processing globally. The company states: “We don’t support the cliche of humans V machines, we believe the combination of AI with human-in-the-loop solutions that will drive the next stage of brilliance in human endeavour.”

Headquartered in Cork, the company has rapidly expanded in recent years and now has offices across Europe and the US.

In the past 12 months, it has grown its workforce from less than 30 employees to more than 100 with significant further growth expected this year.

In December 2021, Altada commenced a four-day work week pilot initiative for its employees. The aim was to improve the well-being of staff and enable a better distribution of caring responsibilities at home. It has also had a positive impact on the environment as it helps employees play their part in reducing carbon created by commuting less to the workplace.

“We are very excited to be selected as finalists in the large category after winning the emerging category last year, as it recognises the incredible work and growth our teams have delivered in the last year,” said Mr Beechinor.

“We take pride in being a company headquartered in Cork exporting technology across the globe, in the past 12 months we have become a global business and we currently operate in 12 offices across Ireland, the UK, USA, India and Malta, and we have plans to continue our expansion in Asia and beyond.”

LSC supporting pharma firms for almost two decades

Established in 2003, LSC partners with top pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, supporting projects across Ireland and Europe.

LSC has a people-first approach to project resourcing, which is bolstered by a consultant success programme. This personalised approach puts a focus on partnership, team engagement, and consultant support to attract, retain, and develop world class talent in a skills-short market.

LSC is consistently ranked as a leading supplier of highly skilled resources within the industry

The company employs approximately 130 people and takes total responsibility for planning, delivering, and managing professional resources to support successful project delivery.

Established in 2003 in Cork, LSC has built a strong reputation for providing world-class engineering and pharmaceutical consultants to cutting-edge life science projects.

It has partnered with most of the world’s top biopharma companies and built a team of 250-plus active consultants supporting projects across Ireland and Europe.

The strength of the biopharma sector in Cork is reliant on multinationals having a strategic partner like LSC to gain access to the skillsets, technical expertise, and local market knowledge they need to successfully deliver their business-critical projects on time and in budget.

The life science industry is the only sector that LSC services, which means it knows the market inside out.

Members of LSC have volunteered on the boards of several industry bodies to keep up to date with industry trends and positive promotion of Ireland and Cork as a centre of excellence for life science manufacturing.

They keep up to date with project activity, market rates, and availability of critical skillsets to help multinational clients who operate within the region make better strategic decisions when resource planning.

LSC has, through 19 years in business, built up an extensive network of engineering and pharmaceutical consultants.

It is focused on continually growing and developing its talent pool so it can provide global biopharma companies across the country with the local market knowledge and niche skillsets they need to successfully deliver their business-critical projects.

In 2020 LSC was awarded second place at the Pharma Industry Awards in the pharma supplier of the year category.

Oisin O’Diomasaigh, LSC’s chief of strategy, said they are thrilled to be a finalist for the Cork Company of the Year. “This is wonderful recognition and testament to all the hard work put in to realise our vision and goals for LSC.”