Pictured above: (l-r) Dr Steven Margetts, Dr Rupert Rawnsley, directors of Keima Ltd; Mark Evans, managing director, R&D Tax and Grants Ltd

A Wolverhampton based tax specialist has helped Cardiff based wireless technology company Keima Ltd to claim back money from HMRC for research and development.

Keima Ltd, based at Cardiff Business and Technology Centre (CBTC) in the city centre, was founded in 2006 by three research scientists to exploit their expertise in wireless communication technologies. Co founders Dr Steven Margetts and Dr Rupert Rawnsley have been involved in the development of wireless planning and optimisation since the mid 1990s and are respected experts in their fields.

The team at Keima develop software solutions that are now used globally by some of the world's top tier telecommunications companies.

R&D Tax and Grants have helped Keima reclaim over £40,000 in tax on research and development over three years. "This couldn't have come at a better time", says Keima founder and director Dr Steven Margetts. "The amount helped our cashflow as research and development accounts for well over 50 per cent of our business. Mobile telephony is a fast moving sector, and we won a large contract in 2010 by configuring what we had developed to suit our new customer base. The first tranche helped us employ someone to qualify leads and help show our clients how to use the tools. The rest of the money was ploughed back in to research and development." 

The founders wanted to develop a suite of tools which would revolutionise the way in which telecommunications for mobile phones and digital wireless applications is delivered.

"We could see how the growth in mobile phone technology would revolutionise the way we all live, and how mobile and data delivery networks were heading but also how future problems could arise from its development," says Dr Steven Margetts. "We launched an initial suite of tools in late 2007; this formed the platform for the software architecture we went on to develop. In 2009, we introduced "Composer", aimed at improving the population coverage for mobile phones in a number of areas. We have continued to develop this over the last two years."

The development of mobile phone networks across the UK has been rapid and the location of the infrastructure for the masts and antennas that provide coverage has to be planned carefully. Keima have developed planning tools which predict the actual population coverage, as opposed to geographical coverage, of an area enabling the planner to model each potential site. Keima claims the system can predict, within 90 per cent accuracy, what proportion of the population of a particular area would be captured. 

Keima have developed an online web-centric software system called "Overture", a tool to design mobile phone networks, which in addition to providing cellular signal planning is also a wireless network. The system combines a modern mapping platform with analysis and reporting automation, allowing users to plan sites and create site portfolios. The roof top space on large buildings is often owned by companies who then rent them out to mobile phone vendors to erect communication masts.  Data collected about these sites is collated by Keima and their software can help solve the problem of site location, and also what technologies to use, such as GSM or 4G, to provide the correct service to the end user.

"I'm so pleased that the Rand D reclaim helped at the time Keima needed it most", said Mark Evans, managing director of R&D Tax and Grants. "The great thing about the scheme is that it is retrospective, and as long as we can work with our clients to prove their case in clear language for a research and development refund, then HMRC are very swift at making the repayment. The difficulty most company accountants find is in taking what the company does and translating it into language that HMRC can understand clearly, so that there are no grey areas. That's our specialism."

"Thanks to R&D Tax and Grants the R and D reclaim was simple and took just eight weeks", says Dr Steven Margetts. "In the software industry it's difficult to patent anything so it's doubly important to keep carrying out R and D, but it's also vital to a company in our sector to continue to be able to reclaim money spent on it."