Abbeytek system zips into big time (From Gazette & Herald)

Abbeytek system zips into big time

A MALTON software developer has hit the big time with a product that is making waves in the industry.

Abbeytek Ltd is preparing to launch a new, upgraded version of Zipcounts - a data analysis system - to a national customer base.

Gary Whitehead has lived in the Norton area for more than 20 years and established Abbeytek in 1998. He now runs the firm with his colleague Mark Farrington.

Based in premises in Langton Road, Abbeytek specialises in developing tailor-made software solutions for small and medium sized local and regional businesses.

Six years ago, the team became involved in the development of a data analysis package with an associate, and Zipcounts was born.

The system is now widely used by a range of organisations in the direct marketing, hotel, travel and tourism, and property management sectors nationwide.

Gary said: "The idea of data collection and retrieval is not revolutionary, but the Zipcounts system is. It is much faster than other similar systems and the upgrade we are about to release - free of charge to existing users - will make exports up to ten times faster still.

"In practice this means that people can load data in minutes that would normally take them days, and can analyse that data in seconds, rather than hours."

Having hit the big time, Gary is quick to point out that Abbeytek's roots remain in the regional business community.

"Software development is still a very big part of the business," he said.

"It is the foundation on which Abbeytek was established and we thoroughly enjoy doing it. It is definitely an area of the business we want to continue to build on in the future."

Updated: 15:33 Wednesday, February 02, 2005