Research and development is a key part of the Irisys story. The company invests a double digit percentage of revenues in R&D and holds over 70 patents.
Creativity is central to the Irisys approach. The company begins by recruiting the very brightest engineers: over a third of the R&D team have PhDs, a spectacularly high figure compared to industry norms.
The next step is to balance the commercial needs of the business - developing a profitable product stream - with bold and unusual ideas.
Lindsay Galloway is Irisys Technical Director. “Like most engineering companies, we talk to our customers to identify the problems they want solving, and then develop products that meet those issues,” he explains.
“But we’re a bit different, because we also invent things no-one’s ever thought of before.
“No-one asked us to invent queue management. We came up with the concept because we developed the technologies and saw a new way to use them. Then we asked our customers, if we could do this for you, would you buy it?”
They did - and the rapidly growing, highly profitable international queue management industry was born, a sector that Irisys dominates. The company is now developing ‘blue sky’ ideas in other markets such as healthcare, where, for example, a rapidly aging demographic demands solutions that will enable people to stay living safely at home, rather than in expensive care facilities.
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