Top Irish solution provider expands to Canada

TORONTO – Dublin, Ireland-based solution provider DNM Analytics chose today, St. Patrick’s Day, to announce its expansion into Canada.

The company whose expertise is creating dashboards so their customers can get the best out of big data is making a $1.8 million investment in Toronto to expand its business throughout North America. The company has hired Mike King as its Canadian managing director as its first step in an aggressive plan that will see the solution provider grow to 35 employees by the end of 2015. King was formerly with RBC Global Asset Management.

The man who hired King, David Quirke, the president and CEO of DNM told CDN that Canada made more sense for North American expansion because Canada and Ireland share similar employment laws and the most popular language is English. Also, Toronto is only 90  minutes away from New York and Chicago where DNM also has customers.

Also the company founder and chairman Malachy P. Smith went to school in Toronto and then worked for seven years at Bell Canada.

“When we were looking to expand to North America I wanted to give back to Canada for the wonderful 10 years I spent here,” Smith said.

DNM is an authorized gold partner of Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. They are also one of the top channel partners for France analytics vendor Tableau Software.

The company already has two customers in Toronto thanks to an economic partnership they have with Enterprise Ireland and the Ireland Chamber of Commerce in Toronto.

“Canada is a good opportunity for DNM. The market here is buoyant and the data analytics space has not mature yet in my opinion. There is good access to skills from the universities in Ontario and we believe we have the right IP to bring to this market,” Quirke said.

DNM’s approach to analytics sees the company first trying to protect the customer’s original investment. “Typically if a customer brings us in they have already bought something and it’s not meeting their needs. What we do is not throw it out but to try and reuse it,” he said.

From there DNM creates big data dashboards and key performance indicator reports to help customers access the right data quicker.

Another area of focus for DNM is to stick to industries they have experience in such as aerospace, manufacturing, telecommunications subscriptions and automotive. Quirke added that for now the company will start to do business only in Ontario before expanding to other provinces in the country.

“What I really like about Canada in all my visits here is the people are good people who are willing to give you at least 15 minutes to chat. From a market perspective, with social media the analytics market is not as mature as other markets and has the potential to provide good value to the company,” he said.

On hand for the announcement was Ireland’s minister for finance Michael Noonan. He told CDN that a company such as DNM provides a win-win for jobs not just in Canada but also back in Ireland.

“I have to thank Canada because they contributed greatly to the recovery of Ireland. Canadian’s lead the IMF constituency and represented Ireland’s interests as well as their own. When I need help my first call is to Jim Flaherty (Canadian Minister for Finance). Canada is very important to us and we respect them,” Noonan said.