Counting on quality
Dualtron has moved with the times since it started out maintaining counting and sorting equipment for banks which has helped to drive turnover growth by 50% in the past two years
W ith over 3,000 Dualtron note-sorting devices dotted around the country, there is unlikely to be a town or village without one of its products.
Even the Aran Islands get a twiceyearly service and maintenance check from one of the company’s engineers, who flies over to check everything is working smoothly in the local Bank of Ireland and Spar shop.
Started in 1991, at what was a “quiet time for business”, according to managing director Dave Byrne, Dualtron initially worked with banks to maintain counting and sorting equipment. Soon, the tag line ‘you can count on Dualtron’ was born, and Byrne and his team have never looked back.
In the intervening years, the Dublinbased company has gone far beyond that initial service-only offering. It now supplies coin and note counting and handling equipment as well as cashless payment systems, which are all but ubiquitous now among large state and corporate bodies. It also supplies a range of security equipment such as time-locked safes and tamper-evident seals.
Dualtron currently has 19 employees, four of whom were taken on in the past two years, and the company will be hiring more this year.
On the banking side, it deals with most of the big players and with its cashless payments systems it has numerous large companies on its books, including the majority of the big pharma firms. It also has systems in various hospitals and colleges.
Both sides of the business are doing very well; last year was the 25th consecutive profitable year for the company. The past two years alone have seen turnover increase by 50%.
“We are definitely on an upturn,” says Byrne. “One of the reasons for this is the extra, added-value services we offer around project management and compliance. Our customers, both on the retail and the banking side, know that when they deal with us they don’t just get a box delivered, it’s customised to work with their systems and processes.”
That notion of adding value for its bigger customers is a major part of Dualtron’s focus now. It looks after scheduling, planning, training and configuring, thereby lightening the workload of bank managers.
Meanwhile the whole cashless payment area is rapidly growing and changing, but Dualtron is nimble and, says Byrne, always looking at the next opportunity.
“With payment systems, things have changed dramatically in the past five years. Everything used to be cash on card, then cash on the server; now it’s cash in the cloud. Of course, it’s faster, more hygienic, and easier to manage; you don’t have to do daily backups. But even getting people’s mindsets to change for that was a big challenge.”
“Our customers know that when they deal with us they don’t just get a box delivered, it’s customised to work with their systems and processes”