Chief Executive Officer of the almost five-year-old software development company Innovative Systems Inc (InnoSyS) Richard Langford believes that the company is making a case for taking pride of place among the local technology enterprises offering a suite of services that are relevant to Guyana’s needs.
The company has been legally registered since September 2013 and runs its business from premises located at 43 Croal and Alexander streets, Georgetown. When Stabroek Business sat down with Langford and his colleagues a few weeks ago to talk about its work, it was discovered that InnoSyS had achieved much in a relatively short space of time.
Langford is a Computer Science graduate of the University of Guyana (UG). Local Information Technology (IT) functionaries continue to speak well of the programme and Langford himself said that his experience at Turkeyen was more than worth the while. Prior to being involved in his present business pursuits he served as a Programmer, Oracle EBS Systems Administrator and Senior Database Administrator with the National Insurance Scheme, the Guyana Sugar Corporation and the Guyana Revenue Authority, respectively.
In 1998, he had piloted the development of the core software solution PeoplePay and it was as early as then that he had considered striking out on his own. Along with Julius Simon, another Analyst/Programmer, who is also a graduate of UG, InnoSyS was launched. Simon serves as the company’s Technical Director.
Software solutions offered by InnoSyS include five modules: Payroll, Human Resource, Purchasing, Inventory and Asset Management, all services which continue to assume a growing relevance in both the public and private sectors. Langford said that increasingly, these programmes are being “customized and utilized by shrewd local business owners. In the case of InnoSyS the company’s clients include a large local bank.
According to Langford, while installation of services is done mostly on the clients’ premises, InnoSyS is now offering a service that allows software to be uploaded remotely through technology that allows for hosting in the clouds. He said this option has been found to be ideal for clients who are desirous of minimizing costs.
Setting aside its core products, InnoSyS also has “an existing list of other solutions and some that are still in the developmental stage. These include Electronic Health Records and Revenue Collection and Financial Management System, which are still in a developmental stage as well as a Trading Platform developed for the United States-based Metalica Commodities Trading. Langford says that the Trading Platform has served as a “game changer” for the client “since prior to our involvement several other IT companies had been approached and attempted, but failed, on numerous occasions to produce an end product built to the client’s unique specifications.
“We are very delighted that this particular project was piloted and developed by a Guyanese IT company. This was accomplished by young, bright, and highly skilled IT developers employed at Innovative Systems Inc.”
Nor has the company’s modest size precluded its growth and vision. “The fact that we have been strategic in our thinking has resulted in us fostering mutually beneficial business alliances,” he said.
InnoSyS, Langford said, also takes considerable pride in being the only company in Guyana enjoying the status of being an Oracle Gold Partner, Oracle being a world-renowned facility database utilized globally as a database server and widely considered to be critical to solving the challenges to information management. (A server reliably manages significant volumes of data in a multiuser environment enabling simultaneous access to the same data by several users while not only delivering high performance but also prohibiting unauthorized access and providing solutions for failure recovery.)
More recently, InnoSyS has been serving as an agent to the internationally renowned NewGen Software,
promoting and marketing the sale of Retail Lending and Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) solutions in Guyana. The latter is considered to be important to the work of local financial agencies in Guyana since they are mandated to be FATCA-compliant under United States law.
InnoSyS’s work has also attracted the attention of the local National Data Management Authority (NDMA). Recently, the company has been tasked with creating the framework and designing initiatives arising out of the need to implement efficient computerized systems in the public sector in order to qualitatively enhance public sector services in a wide range of areas.
Langford said going forward, InnoSyS sees itself as being in the forefront of providing efficient and ever improving technology-driven solutions and services which are required as Guyana strikes out on a development path.
He said part of the company’s long-term goal is also “to invest in our young people by providing adequate training and empowerment to meet the high standards of operations and technical needs of the IT industry.”
Website: www.innosysgy.com.
