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Seaham’s GAS launches new technology division

Cost management firm Great Annual Savings (GAS) is aiming to fast track potential future expansion by launching a new technology division.

GAS announced the move as part of a wider initiative to create a low-cost, low-energy environment at its Seaham headquarters.

It has allowed the company to invest in a cloud-based, centrally-managed IT infrastructure that will significantly reduce costs as the firm pursues an aggressive recruitment strategy to treble headcount by the end of next year.

Under the previous IT model, GAS would have had to purchase new software licences and a full desktop computer for each new employee, invest in a new telephony switchboard and pay for voice recordings to monitor sales calls. That would have increased the company’s annual costs by a six-figure sum if it met its target of employing 150 staff.

Under the new system, however, costs will be kept to a minimum due to a variety of measures that have transferred a traditional process of capital investments into a flexible, revenue-based model.

GAS has invested in energy-efficient computers that automatically switch off at the end of each day, while all data has been moved off-site into a secure cloud data centre, meaning no additional energy is required to cool internal servers. It also means that GAS does not have to invest in additional resource to manage the IT or telephony systems, which can be extended on demand to match the growth of the business.

Moreover, the company has also improved the efficiency of its operations by investing in SAP Business One, an application that allows the company to manage sales, customer and financial data from a single cloud-based source. The move will make it easier for GAS to manage staff workloads, customer accounts, sales forecasting and cashflow as it expands the business rapidly.

Paul Friday, who heads up the new tech division at Great Annual Savings Group, said: “As part of our growth strategy we redesigned our IT infrastructure to be rapidly flexible and revenue-based, using low-energy, cloud-based services. Going forward, that will enable us to grow the business exponentially without the usual checkpoints of capital investment or outgrowing our IT.

“We’re also offering cloud-based services to our clients, giving them the opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint and save significant amounts of money. We can have confidence in our product as we use it ourselves.”

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