Dublin firm Unravel Analytics helps maximise online sales
The company’s first product Unravel Smart Report is a business intelligence tool, which analyses information for senior non-technical business managers.
“This delivers digital revenue insight and provides a competitive advantage in a dynamic, digital sales environment,” says company CEO and co-founder Santina Doherty explaining that it helps companies understand their customers’ journeys online and identifies ways to make improvements.
Since the launch of Smart Report last summer, the company has been working with a number of companies, including 123.ie, Cartrawler, Dropbox and Hertz in Ireland, as well as Canadian Affair, a UK tour operator selling holidays and flights to Canada.
Specifically targeting customers in retail, travel and financial services which are heavily invested in online sales, Unravel has also provided its software for trial to a number of other companies.
The continuous growth of e-commerce is driving a demand for analysis which will allow companies to understand how online sales happen, says Ms Doherty.
“Competitors in this space are now achieving 100% growth year on year and we see good opportunities for growth,” she says.
A UCD BComm graduate, Ms Doherty spent ten years working on developing online sales with Ryanair — starting when it first began selling airline tickets online and going on to become head of ancillary revenue responsible for generating new non-flight related income streams.
After working as a vice president for commercial development at Hostelworld, she set up Unravel in Blackrock in Dublin as a consulting company in 2011, helping clients develop a digital strategy.
In 2013, Ms Doherty joined forces with Donal Troddyn, a computer science graduate with expertise in analytics who became the company’s chief technical officer.
Together they set up a new company which they called Unravel Analytics.
Combining her commercial experience with his technical experience, they saw an opportunity to create a product to analyse digital performance.
Early funding for Unravel Analytics, to the tune of €80,000, came from the local enterprise board in Dun Laoghaire and was used to allow the company recruit five people.
The firm now employs seven people.
Because the software was developed with Ms Doherty’s existing clients, the company already had reference customers when it launched last summer.
At the end of the year, Unravel launched its second product — Unravel Analytics Auditor which automates the testing of analytics tracking.
“It verifies the integrity of the underlying information used for website tracking,” explains Ms Doherty.
She says the response to Unravel Analytics products has been good and is expecting to grow sales by 100% this year.
To date many of the customers have been in Ireland, but the company is also looking at developing sales in the UK and beyond.
Identified by Enterprise Ireland as a ‘High Potential Start Up’ at the end of 2015, Unravel is now planning to raise funds to accelerate its software development and develop sales internationally.
The company expects to increase its staff numbers from seven to 13 by the end of the year, taking on mainly software developers as well as some sales staff.
Company: Unravel Analytics
Location: Blackrock, Co Dublin
CEO: Santina Doherty
Staff: 7
Product: Digital analysis software
Website: www.unravel.ie
