DATA DEFINES the 21st century. It is the backbone of the information economy and a critical part of the infrastructure underpinning every business and public service on the planet.

Without the reams of text-based information powering the global market virtually nothing would move, and the commercial sector is constantly on the hunt for ways to improve the efficiency, accuracy and speed of the data entry process. Come up with a means to achieve this and, a pound to a penny, you will be sitting on a business with multi-billion dollar potential.

Currently in negotiation with Blackberry to include its AdapTex product in new devices, the people behind Scotland's KeyPoint Technologies have done exactly that. Armed with £6.5 million start-up capital and a software product that promises to reduce the data entry workload by around 60%, they are up, running and deep in negotiation with some of the world's biggest names.

"The 10 biggest electronics brands are behind 80% of the devices on the market, and our No 1 strategy is to get someone like HP or Motorola to adopt our technology and embed it in all their products," said John Falconer, the former Xerox executive who is one of KeyPoint's directors and co-founders.

The big brands are paying attention too because AdapTex could revolutionise the way in which text messages, emails and documents are created, communicated and updated. In a nutshell, the software is an intelligent system which monitors the users' keystrokes and presents them with a one-click option to complete the words and phrases it predicts they are trying to type.

It is similar to the predictive text option on many mobile phones but takes the concept further by automatically adapting to the context of the information and basing its suggestions on past behaviour.

Making the creation and editing of documents on miniaturised PDAs and mobile phones practicable by slashing the number of keystrokes required, AdapTex's built-in dictionary can be customised by scanning in existing documents to create a lexicon tailored to users' individual business needs.

Mobile salesmen, for example, could complete order forms with a few strokes of their mobile keypad, medical staff could update patient records in half the time and clerical staff could work on documents that automatically enter key phrases or information as required.

Lothian and Borders police is currently trialling a system which would see traffic cops abandoning their wee black books for PDAs, and KeyPoint is in discussions over the project.

"Any process that requires form filling or data entry of any kind is a potential market for us, so specific application development for corporates or public services will be another key growth area for us," said Falconer.

This is high-stakes stuff. During discussions over how AdapTex could be applied to their service offering, Vodafone executives told Falconer that every 1% of user traffic they can get to use non-voice services is worth $280m a year to them, while the person-to-person messaging market KeyPoint is also targeting is expected to reach $80 billion by 2009.

In addition to targeting major brands, communications carriers and corporates, KeyPoint is also negotiating direct with device manufacturers. Deals have already been completed with the Dubai-based iMate and Kuala Lumpur's Fifth Media, while six major Taiwanese manufac- turers are also evaluating the product.

Given that KeyPoint has grown out of chief executive Sanjay Patel's desire to create a keyboard enabling his brother - who lost his left arm in an accident - to use a computer productively, this is the stuff of capitalist fairytales. In two years the firm has moved from a two-man show to an exciting player on the cusp of a virtually infinite market.

"It's tremendously exciting," said Falconer. "We're now well on our way to becoming the worldwide de facto standard in this field."