Partner Article

Love at first site for expanding IT firm

A DUTCH IT expert has chosen to launch his software business in the North East after falling in love with the region while on a motor-biking holiday.

Boy Callaars and his wife Saskia chanced upon the County Durham village of Edmundbyers while touring the country during the summer of 2007.

Now Boy has chosen the North East to launch the PicaPica Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system aimed specifically at small businesses.

The 26-year-old said: “It was love at first sight. We came off the boat at Harwich, headed north and ended up at the youth hostel in Edmundbyers, because the one in Newcastle was full.

“Within a couple of hours, we were playing the pub quiz and soon realised this was an amazing place with incredibly friendly people and was somewhere we wanted to live.”

Boy and 24-year-old Saskia eventually moved to Stanhope in April last year with Boy continuing to work as a freelance web developer.

Managing his clients and workload led Boy to develop PicaPica, which has been further adapted for launch onto the marketplace.

PicaPica – the Latin name for the magpie – has all of the standard features of CRM to help businesses stay on top of opportunities, sales, marketing campaigns and customer communications. Tailor-made applications can also be added such as social media interaction, eMarketing or accounts management.

The web-hosted software, which has been tested with a number of Dutch and UK clients, is aimed at small businesses in all sectors, ideally with between five and 15 users. Boy aims to market the system in the North East first before taking the software nationwide.

He said: “PicaPica has been created to provide smaller businesses with the perfect CRM system that really simplifies things for them, boosting their productivity and saving a lot of time.

“It’s about people not business and that is how I am as a person – I don’t see myself as an entrepreneur. You have to treat people well and that is what I’m aiming to do by simplifying customer relationships.

“I’m aware that the first couple of years will be about building the reputation and credibility of PicaPica but I’m very confident that I have found the perfect CRM system for small businesses.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .