A pioneering Bradford firm is raising more than £1 million to help its ambitious expansion plans.

Advance Digital Communications has published its prospectus for a share issue on the OFEX facility - a way for small firms to raise extra cash on the Stock Exchange.

The firm, which is based on the West 26 business park at the Chain Bar roundabout off the M62 motorway, has developed a pioneering product called PresentationPro which ties together various ways of communicating.

PresentationPro was the brainchild of the firm's managing director, Michael Smith, 48, who founded the company.

Mr Smith said today that hundreds of requests for the software had already been made.

"Some people want the software and others want us to do presentations for them," he added.

The company currently employs 40 staff and will use the cash generated by the share issue to send out a sales team to bring in hundreds of orders from firms and individuals wanting the software.

PresentationPro is a software on CD-Rom which the firm believes sets a new standard when delivering presentations.

The package allows people who make presentations to bring together spreadsheets, computer-based slide packages, interactive slides, video clips or animation to present them using a CD-Rom through a laptop or computer.

The firm has formed a partnership with Bradford University which will train students to form an employment stream for the company.

Professor Rae Earnshaw, the university's head of electronic imaging and media communications, is a non-executive director of the company.

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