txttools limited

25 April 2006.
Leeds, UK

Yorkshire company, Cy-nap, has ramped up its sales force by employing up to three executives, thanks to Connect Yorkshire, the organisation that primes technology companies for growth and investment.

Cy-nap has taken advantage of Connect Yorkshire’s Fast Invest scheme, which provides young technology companies with mentoring and financial support to boost the management team ready for sales lift off.

Leeds based Cy-nap provides text message services to educational and healthcare organisations. The technology allows schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and clinics to send and receive text messages to groups of mobile phones using a secure web-based interface.

Typical uses in the educational arena include an ecological alternative to the satchel post, providing information about emergency school closures, as well as reminders of school trips and parents’ evenings. In colleges messages are sent about room changes, coursework deadlines and open days.

Meanwhile the system has applications in the health care sector in reducing the number of appointments which patients fail to attend. The problem costs the NHS £180m a year in missed GP appointments alone. In practices using Cy-nap’s meditxt the number of ‘Did Not Attends’ has fallen by 22 per cent.

Cy-nap’s managing director Steve McCann said: “The past 18 months have been exciting times for Cy-nap, we now work with over 130 UK universities and colleges and more than 80 clinics as well as many businesses. This growth means that we have to expand our sales force rapidly in order to fulfil our potential and reach customers in geographical areas such as the South West and South East.”

“Fast Invest has given us the opportunity to do this immediately, instead of waiting for 6 to 12 months, by which time we would have missed out on signing up a significant number of clients. We now have two additional members of the team to grow our educational portfolio, whilst a third individual will be joining us in June to expand our healthcare sales operation.”

Connect Yorkshire’s executive director Nick Butler said: “Fast Invest is designed for companies exactly like Cy-nap: companies which have tremendous growth potential, but need help to move quickly and focus on sales and exploiting their market.

“We know from talking to technology companies in this situation that the leap from a development to sales orientation is a hard one to make and requires different skills and focus. The Fast Invest scheme is designed to help companies make this step change.”

To keep the Fast Invest fund evergreen, and to help future companies, the executive’s salary will become a debt due to Connect Yorkshire, repayable over 4 years. For further information visit www.connectyorkshire.org. and www.txttools.co.uk

For further information please contact:

Stephen McCann,
Managing Director
t: +44(0)113 234 2111
m: +44(0)7866 438056
e: smccann@cy-nap.com
w: www.txttools.co.uk