GET Real Systems, the supply chain software company which operates out of a huge, converted farmhouse near York, has clinched a major deal with the University of Birmingham.

Its PROACTIS system, which monitors purchase and stock control, will be rolled out to more than 100 different budget centres across campus in a plan to streamline the university's £80 million non-staff spend each year.

The deal, worth a six-figure sum, means that the pilot scheme at the university's finance office and its engineering and cancer studies budget centres will be broadened out to cover every aspect other than wages by next summer.

Get Real Systems outgrew its Clifton Moor base and moved into Holtby Manor, a huge converted farmhouse between Stamford Bridge and Dunnington, in March last year

The expansion was on the back of a raft of new contracts for the firm's Proactis electronic purchasing management system and Dreamsuite accountancy and manufacturing option.

This latest deal confirms the faith of major investment company Axiomlab which bought a third share of Get Real Systems for £1 million last July

Axiomlab has just announced pre-tax losses of £2.439 million, not unusual for a major investment company.

But Ray Ingleby, its chairman, believes that the purchase of 33 per cent of the ordinary share capital of Get Real Systems, along with other investments made on favourable terms because of the recent downturn in the technology sector, would eventually create shareholder value.

Get Real System's marketing director, Mark McCarthy, predicts that by the middle of next year turnover would have roughly doubled to £1.5 million.

He said: "In the current financial quarter there have been only six UK-based technology companies that have received venture capital funding of £1 million or more. We're one of them.

"In the corresponding quarter last year there were 120, which illustrates how Get Real Systems has succeeded in bucking the downward trend - and no doubt will continue with that impetus because any cost-saving technology at a time of recession is an attractive investment."

Get Real's customers also include NSPCC, Cornhill Insurance, the Pole Star Publishing Group, US internet company XO Communications, and, more recently, Hoyer UK, liquids distributors, of Huddersfield.

Axiomlab was lured into investing heavily in it because of a potential £300 million European market for its product.