Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 30.03.2022 
GCD was founded in 1999, since then we’ve grown from a 1 client business to the thriving business it is today, employing a team of over 36, developing 16 active projects, across 48 live client accounts.
GCD design and develop unique digital solutions through the provision of a full end to end agile software development service, centred around multi-disciplinary teams who understand, design, code, test and deploy, across all technologies on web, mobile, desktop and cloud.
Our clients are some of Northern Ireland and Ireland’s most recognised brands including Coca Cola, PowerNI, Belfast Telegraph, Fane Valley & the Independent.ie.
As part of our ongoing growth, we recently acquired the popular Northern Ireland house hunting portal Propertynews.com, from the global print and digital publisher, Mediahuis. In addition to developing digital products for our clients, we also develop and operate a suite of products ourselves, including Chariteer – a cloud based fundraising CRM for charities, Omega – a church management platform and ConnectED – a school website and app solution. The purchase of Propertynews.com fits perfectly within our strategy to further grow this stream of our business, whilst simultaneously growing our client service work.
What do we do?
What we do is a bit different, our digital products and custom software solutions solve real problems for businesses that off-the-shelf solutions can’t. We take a spark of an idea and turn it into a driving force that disrupts markets, differentiates businesses, and drives growth.
We build an intimate understanding of each client’s business, by taking the time to analyse and truly understand the pains and opportunities facing the organisation, so that the digital solutions we develop make a real and lasting positive impact.
At GCD, you’ll find a team of dedicated, ambitious engineers, UX designers, mobile app developers, project managers, QA engineers and support engineers. Supporting the business, we have staff in Marketing, Operations, Sales and Accounts.
Recent innovations
Thanks to the pandemic, it became apparent that larger technology projects were often being put off to more certain times. This helped us identify a new area of opportunity in 2021, how could we help those who weren’t quite ready to commit to a full project?
We were able to provide a new offering that has proved popular and a gateway to our main digital product and software development services. Our Product Design Sprint shapes an idea into an actionable project plan, with a defined solution, a solid approach and an estimated budget.
It’s an iterative process that reduces uncertainty around a problem or idea and acts as a solid foundation for any project. It ensures upfront that a project is feasible and that a solution is possible. It offers a higher confidence for the client forward and results in the production of a tangible prototype of the app, that can be shared with investors or used to test product market fit.
Awards
We were delighted to win UK App Agency of the Year at the 2021 UK App Awards.
It followed on from our successes in 2020 when we were awarded Best Streaming App for our work on FarmFlix and Best News App for Independent.ie.
We have recently been shortlisted for Best Remote Team at The Spiders 2022 and Tech Company of the Year at the Global Business Tech Awards!
Being shortlisted and winning these awards has had a real impact for us, helping us to showcase our services, and enabling us to keep doing what we love: building ambitious software and digital products and to represent the thriving software and technology sector in Northern Ireland.
Keep up to date with GCD on our social channels:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GCDTechnologies/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gcdtechnologies
