The Dublin-based edtech has developed a tool called Better Examinations to allow colleges to bring their exam formats into the digital age
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Piero Tintori, founder and chief executive, Terminalfour: ‘We’ve built a whole platform to allow universities and organisations like the Law Society to provide a much better experience’
A Dublin-based edtech firm is aiming to change centuries of tradition and make academic exams smarter. Terminalfour has developed a tool called Better Examinations to allow third-level colleges to bring their exam formats into the digital age. “Exams have been the same for the last 200 years. You go in for a couple of hours, write a lot and your hand hurts. There has been a huge move towards doing exams online, either remotely or in a hall typing,” Piero Tintori, chief executive at Terminalfour, told the Business Post. “We’ve built a whole platform to allow universities and organisations like the Law Society to provide a much better experience. The students use their laptops like they normally would and that has been a new market for us since Covid.”
Terminalfour provides a tech platform for universities to manage digital experiences for current and prospective students. The business was founded by Tintori in 1997 and works with 240 universities across 11 countries. “With the modern student, their first engagement isn’t with an open day or a college fair. It’s engaging with the university digitally. We’ve built a platform to help universities engage in a more successful way with those students,” Tintori said. “Now, it’s not just about managing content but using digital marketing techniques to reach more students.”
The original focus of the business was web development and content management, during the wild west of the early days of the web. It was through that experience and assistance from Enterprise Ireland that Tintori redirected efforts towards the third-level sector in particular. “We were working in web content management originally and found it incredibly competitive in Ireland. As we grew internationally, we found it wasn’t as competitive outside of Ireland, so the experience we had in Ireland helped us,” he said. “I went on the leadership for growth programme with Enterprise Ireland in 2013 and during that we realised that going deep into universities and colleges was a space we could do really well.”
Tintori said the agency had played a critical role in enabling his business to realise its potential. “We’ve had a fantastic experience with Enterprise Ireland. They provided us R&D grants but the leadership for growth course totally transformed the company. Then we did a programme called innovation for growth, where we realised that a lot of our new growth would come from work we weren’t doing yet,” he said. “They have been very helpful on the ground in the markets we work in. Whether it’s Australia, New Zealand, the UK or wherever, we can call somebody and it saves us weeks of work.”
Tintori is bullish on the company’s growth prospects, and expects to significantly grow staff in the near future. “The goal is to have more things to sell into universities. We’re building up our sales team in the US as well. We’re at 90 people now, we’ll be at 100 very soon and I expect to be at 120 within three years.”
This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland.

Terminalfour drives change to make academic exams smarter

Futureproof: Terminalfour specialises in web management in the higher education sector
Fri, Apr 6, 2018, 05:30
Olive Keogh
   
 
Recessions don’t only affect a company’s bottom line. They have an impact across the board and companies typically become cautious and batten down the hatches. But when things went south in 2008, Piero Tintori did the opposite. “We decided to accelerate and use the opportunity of people taking to the slow lane, as it were, to grow,” says the founder and chief executive of digital marketing and web content management company, Terminalfour . “I think a lot of people used the recession as an excuse to put the brakes on. Business sentiment became very nervous whether it needed to or not. Organisations began pausing projects and we saw our competitors pulling back. “By contrast, we began pushing forward and took three critical steps to position ourselves for growth. We redeveloped our product from scratch, we capitalised on our knowledge of the higher education sector and decided to focus specifically on this niche and we turned our attention firmly towards international markets.”
The strategy worked. Terminalfour today employs 72 people and has more than 200 higher education clients in 13 countries, including the United States, Canada, the UK and South Africa. In 2017, Terminalfour won €4.2 million in new business with more than half of that coming from North America. Dublin-born Tintori founded Terminalfour while at DCU studying computer applications. By the time he graduated in 2000, the company employed six people. Today, it is headquartered in Dublin with two offices in the US. Its Boston office employs 12 people and, since January, there have been two staff at its newly opened San Diego office from where it services clients on the US west coast as well as the Australian and New Zealand markets. Downturn
Terminalfour was 11 years-old when the recession hit. At the time, it had clients across multiple sectors. Galvanised by the opportunities he believed the downturn presented – specifically in the area of higher education – Tintori raised €1.2 million in venture capital from Investec and AIB seed capital in 2009 and began strengthening the company’s structure and management team to underpin its growth. It won its first clients in North America a year later and the US market now accounts for about 60 per cent of its near €10 million turnover. Closer to home, its clients include Imperial College London, the University of St Andrew’s in Scotland and University College Dublin. “We recognised that we needed a diverse international client base, not least because it would protect us against downturns in individual markets,” Tintori says. “We took a very softly, softly approach to the US, starting in 2008/09, and slowly built our presence there with reference clients. “We had heard horror stories of companies spending huge amounts of money trying to break into the US market and we were determined not to do the same. From a standing start in the US eight years ago, we now have 130 higher education clients there, including the universities of Florida, Columbia and Seattle. We’re in two-thirds of states in the US and across Canada. “We broke into the Australian market in 2012/13 and have been in the UK since around 2005 where we have 60 per cent of the market. “The Irish market has always been competitive and a very good test bed for us before we became visible to international competitors. We have around a 50 per market cent share in Ireland,” Tintori says. Terminalfour’s platform helps third-level institutions to maximise the effectiveness of their digital and content strategies. “Our business is large-scale website management and ensuring that colleges keep up to speed with the high expectations of potential students when it comes to engaging with their websites and content,” Tintori says. “Managing websites is an enormous task for universities. The University of Florida has more than 3,000 sites, for example, and they need to be sure that they are all consistent and connecting with students to drive recruitment. The University of Massachusetts is a client and it has had a 300 per cent increase in enquiries using our platform. Adjust content
“Essentially we ‘listen’ to what people are doing on the websites. We know where they come from, what they are enquiring about and adjust the content accordingly,” Tintori adds. As an example, he cites queries identified as coming from law firms. “If they are browsing from a firm, then they are likely to be already qualified, so we push content about post-graduate courses.”
Terminalfour does all its software development in-house and is about to open a Polish office to focus on software test automation. In 2014, the company received a further €1 million in funding from its investors to drive international sales and Tintori’s main focus now in on bringing in new projects. To this end he flew more than 260,000 air miles in 2017. “It was clear that our strategy was working and we had the growth and the customers to prove it,” he says. “I think our investors were willing to back us again because we have always made very efficient use of capital. With the help of Enterprise Ireland, we have applied the principles of lean manufacturing to our business and have learned from watching other companies. Without this I think we might have made more mistakes.”
Asked if the name Terminalfour has any particular significance, Tintori laughs. “Afraid not,” he says. “I was under pressure to find a name and happened to be in what was then the impressive new Terminal Four at Heathrow and that’s where the idea came from. So, it’s a little bit random. However, in my view it’s less about the name and more about what you make of the brand.”

How a digital content company that started in DCU went global

Futureproof: Terminalfour specialises in web management in the higher education sector
36 minutes ago
   
 
Recessions don’t only affect a company’s bottom line. They have an impact across the board and companies typically become cautious and batten down the hatches. But when things went south in 2008, Piero Tintori did the opposite. “We decided to accelerate and use the opportunity of people taking to the slow lane, as it were, to grow,” says the founder and chief executive of digital marketing and web content management company, Terminalfour . “I think a lot of people used the recession as an excuse to put the brakes on. Business sentiment became very nervous whether it needed to or not. Organisations began pausing projects and we saw our competitors pulling back. “By contrast, we began pushing forward and took three critical steps to position ourselves for growth. We redeveloped our product from scratch, we capitalised on our knowledge of the higher education sector and decided to focus specifically on this niche and we turned our attention firmly towards international markets.”
The strategy worked. Terminalfour today employs 72 people and has more than 200 higher education clients in 13 countries, including the United States, Canada, the UK and South Africa. In 2017, Terminalfour won €4.2 million in new business with more than half of that coming from North America. Dublin-born Tintori founded Terminalfour while at DCU studying computer applications. By the time he graduated in 2000, the company employed six people. Today, it is headquartered in Dublin with two offices in the US. Its Boston office employs 12 people and, since January, there have been two staff at its newly opened Santiago office from where it services clients on the US west coast as well as the Australian and New Zealand markets. Downturn
Terminalfour was 11 years-old when the recession hit. At the time, it had clients across multiple sectors. Galvanised by the opportunities he believed the downturn presented – specifically in the area of higher education – Tintori raised €1.2 million in venture capital from Investec and AIB seed capital in 2009 and began strengthening the company’s structure and management team to underpin its growth. It won its first clients in North America a year later and the US market now accounts for about 60 per cent of its near €10 million turnover. Closer to home, its clients include Imperial College London, the University of St Andrew’s in Scotland and University College Dublin. “We recognised that we needed a diverse international client base, not least because it would protect us against downturns in individual markets,” Tintori says. “We took a very softly, softly approach to the US, starting in 2008/09, and slowly built our presence there with reference clients. “We had heard horror stories of companies spending huge amounts of money trying to break into the US market and we were determined not to do the same. From a standing start in the US eight years ago, we now have 130 higher education clients there, including the universities of Florida, Columbia and Seattle. We’re in two-thirds of states in the US and across Canada. “We broke into the Australian market in 2012/13 and have been in the UK since around 2005 where we have 60 per cent of the market. “The Irish market has always been competitive and a very good test bed for us before we became visible to international competitors. We have around a 50 per market cent share in Ireland,” Tintori says. Terminalfour’s platform helps third-level institutions to maximise the effectiveness of their digital and content strategies. “Our business is large-scale website management and ensuring that colleges keep up to speed with the high expectations of potential students when it comes to engaging with their websites and content,” Tintori says. “Managing websites is an enormous task for universities. The University of Florida has more than 3,000 sites, for example, and they need to be sure that they are all consistent and connecting with students to drive recruitment. The University of Massachusetts is a client and it has had a 300 per cent increase in enquiries using our platform. Adjust content
“Essentially we ‘listen’ to what people are doing on the websites. We know where they come from, what they are enquiring about and adjust the content accordingly,” Tintori adds. As an example, he cites queries identified as coming from law firms. “If they are browsing from a firm, then they are likely to be already qualified, so we push content about post-graduate courses.”
Terminalfour does all its software development in-house and is about to open a Polish office to focus on software test automation. In 2014, the company received a further €1 million in funding from its investors to drive international sales and Tintori’s main focus now in on bringing in new projects. To this end he flew more than 260,000 air miles in 2017. “It was clear that our strategy was working and we had the growth and the customers to prove it,” he says. “I think our investors were willing to back us again because we have always made very efficient use of capital. With the help of Enterprise Ireland, we have applied the principles of lean manufacturing to our business and have learned from watching other companies. Without this I think we might have made more mistakes.”
Asked if the name Terminalfour has any particular significance, Tintori laughs. “Afraid not,” he says. “I was under pressure to find a name and happened to be in what was then the impressive new Terminal Four at Heathrow and that’s where the idea came from. So, it’s a little bit random. However, in my view it’s less about the name and more about what you make of the brand.”

Irish company helps third-level institutions engage with students better online
58 minutes ago
   
 
Irish technology firm TerminalFour experienced double-digit growth this year leading to it securing €4.2 million in new business wins. The company said more than half of the new deals arose in North America, a market it has been targeting since securing €1 million in investment from Investec and AIB Seed Capital Fund two years ago to expand operations there. TerminalFour said it doubled the amount of business it does in the region in 2017 and expects to do so again in the coming year. It is also targeting new markets, including in Latin America, and expected sustained growth in the UK, mainland Europe and Australia. TerminalFour, which employs more than 70 people worldwide, said it intends to open new bases next year in San Diego and Poland. This will bring the number of offices around the world to nine in total. Engage
The company helps universities and colleges manage their website, social media and mobile channels and engage with students more effectively. Its digital engagement and web-content management platform is used by more than 200 universities and colleges to power higher education websites throughout the world. University of St Andrews, University of Florida, Imperial College London , Columbia University and University College Dublin are among its clients. The firm said average deal values rose by 30 per cent last year. Much of the growth was due to an increase in demand for its web hosting platform. The latest abridged accounts for TerminalFour show accumulated losses rose by €504,000 in the 12 months to the end of October 2016 to €3.2 million from €2.7 million a year earlier.

Tech firm TerminalFour targeting further growth in North America

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Mike Taylor, vice president worldwide sales, TerminalFour  and Piero Tintori, CEO and founder, TerminalFour
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Dublin-headquartered software firm TerminalFour has announced that its solution has resulted in cost savings of more than 100,000 for Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC) in the US, compared with alternative solutions. TerminalFour has enhanced NICC’s online accessibility for faculty, current and prospective students with a fully responsive website. With more than 7,000 students and offering around 85 academic programmes, NICC serves eight counties in northeast Iowa and surrounding areas. TerminalFour had previously provided NICC with its digital engagement and web content management solution to introduce structure, hierarchy and workflow onto its website. Last March, the Irish company announced plans to expand its North American operations and recruit 15 new people at its US headquarters (HQ) in Boston over the next 18 months. Sorcha Corcoran


TerminalFour solution cost €100k less than competitors for Iowa college

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Name	Work History	Title	Status
Piero Tintori		Founder, Chief Executive Officer	Current
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