Management & Board

Fergal McGovern - Chief Executive Officer and Founder

fmgFergal has worked in software for more than 20 years, both in the US and Ireland. Before founding VisibleThread, Fergal was Product Management Director with Compuware, a $1.3 billion a year organization (NASDAQ: CPWR), where he set strategic direction for the company’s Business Requirements Management suite.

Fergal came to Compuware through the 2006 acquisition of SteelTrace, a software start-up he founded in 2001. Fergal conceived of the SteelTrace Catalyze product, and played a key role in bringing Catalyze to market and growing top line revenue by 80% CAGR at exit. Catalyze is now branded as OptimalTrace and is a core part of Compuware’s product offering.

Before founding SteelTrace, Fergal was a technical leader at middleware product vendor IONA (NASDAQ: IONA) Technologies. He’s held senior technical positions in a number of blue chip companies including: GTE, Bank Of Montreal (Harris Bank), Dell Computer, Kraft Foods, and Advantest (Japan).

View Fergal’s linkedin profile here: linkedin.com/in/fergalmcgovern

Jason O’Connell - Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder

jocWith more than 15 years in software development, Jason has extensive technical expertise in software architecture, design, and the development of web-based information systems. Jason’s experience covers building effective software development teams, implementing software development and test methodologies and delivering quality software solutions. Throughout his career, Jason has played key roles leading research initiatives and guiding technology strategies, such as leveraging new Web 2.0 technologies.

Jason and Fergal first met at SteelTrace in 2001 where Jason was the technical architect till 2006. He moved on to Compuware (NASDAQ: CPWR) after Compuware acquired SteelTrace in 2006.

Board of Directors

Paul O’Dea - Chairman

Paul O’Dea is the CEO of Select Strategies, a consulting and education firm that helps IT companies succeed. He’s worked with a variety of companies, from start-ups to household names, like Expedia and Hewlett Packard. Before co-founding Select Strategies with Donal Daly, Paul was a founder of Credo, an international banking software company that was acquired by one of the world’s largest application software companies.

Paul is active in new ventures and serves on the board of several early stage high-tech companies, including Customer Respect Group and Mapflow. Paul is a co-author, with Donal Daly, of the book “Select Selling” (Oak Tree Press 2004). His latest book, “The Business Battlecard” (Oak Tree Press) was released in April 2009. He writes extensively about entrepreneurial sales and marketing. Paul is a former Chairperson of the Irish Software Association and is on the Governing Board of ICT Ireland. He is an engineer by training and is an MBA graduate from University College Dublin.

Colm O’ Cuilleanain

Colm brings more than 25 years of leadership experience to VisibleThread and represents the interests of a number of private investors. Colm’s areas of expertise include change-management, information technology, funding, mergers and acquisitions, MBO’s, crisis management, large scale tenders, and business plan formulation.

Colm has invested in a number of successful technology start-ups including Netsure Telecom, a tech company that developed business intelligence software for the global telecommunications market. Netsure was acquired by Oracle in September 2007.

In 1999, Colm established his own media business and subsequently sold it to The Maiden Group Plc. in 2002. He remained with the business as managing director until early 2006, developing the business in Ireland and consulting on various projects in the UK. In 2005, Maiden was appointed preferred supplier for the CIE advertising contract valued at €100 million over the franchise’s five-year term. He resigned from Maiden following the takeover of The Maiden Group in April 2006 by a US firm, Titan Worldwide. Prior to 1999, Colm held positions as Managing Director of the Avenir Group and Chief Executive Officer of Mills & Allen Ltd.

Alex Hobbs

Alex represents the interests of the AIB Seed Capital Fund and sits in a Board Observer capacity.

Fergal McGovern

Fergal is founder and CEO of VisibleThread.

VisibleThread for IT

2:48 minutes
This summary overview shows the business case for using VisibleThread for IT programs. It shows why up to 42% of IT project cost can be attributed to defective documentation and demonstrates how VisibleThread addresses this large business issue.

Red-flagging Bad Language

3:47 minutes
There are some words/phrases that you should avoid in a proposal. This short video shows how VisibleThread scans and red-flags 'bad language' in your RFP Responses.

Using Discovery to spot Gaps

2:28 minutes
Identification of key concepts in issued documents (RFP etc.) helps align the language of the response volumes. Discovery in VisibleThread can uncover mismatches and lack of alignment between issuer and response docs to support reviews and underpin a winning bid.

Validating Win Theme Language

4:43 minutes
Win themes articulate business differentiation. Too often, with multiple contributors and authors, it is hard to keep theme language consistent.

Here we see how VisibleThread validates response docs against win themes by:

A starter compliance matrix in 3 minutes

4:20 minutes
Proposal Managers have to manually scan issued documents or pdfs to spot requirements prefaced with 'shall', 'must' etc. and track them in spreadsheets. This demo shows an 'obligation scan' run against a draft RFP pdf. All instances of 'will', 'must', 'shall' are identified. It concludes by generating a first pass of an Excel Compliance Matrix.

Collaborations and Team Reviews with
Discussions

5:31 minutes
Managing inputs from multiple contributors and conducting efficient team reviews is critical to successful outcomes. This demo shows how VisibleThread supports collaboration using web based discussions.

Integrating with MS SharePoint

2:36 minutes
VisibleThread integrates with MS SharePoint using an intuitive import capability. This short demo shows how you can import an MS SharePoint document for analysis.

Plain Language Analysis

4:11 minutes
Plain Language Analysis drives clear documentation. This demo outlines how VisibleThread can identify long sentences, passive langauge and facilitate plain langauge audits.

Bid, No-bid Analysis

5:57 minutes
The right bid / no-bid decision when chasing Gov. business is key. Here we analyze a number solicitations in 5 minutes for fit.