A SCOTTISH software firm once touted as one of the brightest technology prospects in the country has entered insolvency proceedings for the second time inside five years.

Picsel International, which has a range of intellectual property and patents relating to apps and mobile phone software, has now been placed in provisional liquidation while subsidiary SmartOffice Technologies is in administration.

That development comes four years after management at Picsel Technologies, including co-founder Imran Khand, staged a buyout of that business to rescue it from administration. The Picsel International business emerged from this buyout.

Brian Milne and Linda Barr, from French Duncan, have been appointed as provisional liquidator at Picsel International and administrator of Paisley-based SmartOffice. Mr Milne confirmed the businesses have suffered from cash flow difficulties which meant they were unable to continue trading.

He said: "In essence all of the intellectual property is owned by Picsel, which is incorporated in Malta, and SmartOffice exploits that on behalf of Picsel.

"The reality of it is it is a cash flow issue in terms of revenue coming in and the timing of it and trying to collect it from places like Malaysia and the USA versus the cash that needs to be immediately paid out in terms of staff salaries.

"The short answer is it has gone through a credit crunch and effectively it has run out of cash."

There were 14 redundancies made from the Paisley premises last week. That leaves 17 employees in Scotland and Mr Milne said he is still trying to find out if a further six people in Asia are staff members or contractors.

While admitting it was "early days" in the insolvency process Mr Milne revealed there has already been "two or three" notes of interest from buyers keen to take on Picsel's technology.

One party is thought to be close to providing a non-binding heads of terms document.

Mr Milne, who confirmed interest from the UK and overseas, said: "I would hope to see something concrete if not by the end of this week then by the middle of next week."

He refused to be drawn on how much the assets could be sold for and said: "The IP and patents are worth what someone is willing to pay for them."

The future of the remaining employees is also uncertain with Mr Milne adding: "It very much depends on who buys it and what they want to do with it."

Picsel Technologies was set up by Mr Khand and Dr Majid Anwar in 1998. The management attracted £7.7m of venture capital funding in 2001 in a deal which valued the group at around £20m.

In 2007 it was named Scotland's software company of the year and the following year received the Queen's Award for Enterprise.

Prior to going into administration in July 2009 the business employed 90 people at its Renfrewshire headquarters plus a further 40 across Japan, China, Korea, Malaysia and the US.

According to French Duncan Picsel's software has been shipped in more than 700 million mobile handsets around the world in products from electronics companies including LG, Samsung and Sharp.

In April last year Mr Khand said he expected to file accounts at Companies House showing a small profit and stated the company was being "more cautious" but still had grand ambitions to compete in the global software market.

Earlier this year Picsel International said it had completed more than seven million downloads of its Smart Office apps which are used for viewing and editing documents on tablet devices and smartphones.

On August 19 Picsel announced a new reseller partnership with IonaWorks Corporation for sales across Taiwan, Korea and Japan.

Companies House documents show Mr Khand resigned as a director of SmartOffice on August 23 just a few weeks before administrators were called in.

SmartOffice is wholly owned by Picsel International.