Member Article

Local IT Company Celebrates Record Financial Year

Gateshead based IT solutions provider Smart IT are celebrating a record financial year in 2020/21 with over 30% growth taking their annual turnover to 3.6 million. Despite the current climate Smart IT have continued to grow, far exceeding the “Pre-COVID-19” target for 2020 of achieving a 3 million annual turnover.

The firm specialises in managed IT support, cybersecurity services, cloud services, and cloud telecoms, across all sectors including charities, education, healthcare, professional services, and manufacturing.

Due to the nature of the business, Smart IT experienced an upsurge in the demand for their IT services. A quick and agile service was required to deploy secure home working solutions to many of their clients during the pandemic.

“Almost overnight, we helped hundreds of clients to set up their workforce securely for remote working, switching quickly from office-based to home working, providing future proofed solutions for maintaining a hybrid secure workforce.
Many clients saw the COVID-19 pandemic as the mechanism for change and an opportunity to embrace a new working model to ensuring their operations are secure. A lot of business owners focused on survival through improving efficiencies, which is where Smart IT can really add value.” Managing Director, Tony Wilson

In addition to the financial growth, the company has also appointed 13 new roles, including helpdesk and senior engineers, as well as Account Managers to support our new customers. Smart IT has also demonstrated their commitment to developing their existing workforce with several employees securing promotion.

“We believe firmly in investing and developing our existing employees. It is part of the Smart IT DNA to provide an “Opportunity for Everyone”, at Smart IT “hard work is recognised”. Several of the senior team began their careers within IT with us and have progressed up the career ladder gaining promotion due their high level of expertise and positive attitudes shining through. Career progression and promoting from within, is always high on our agenda at Smart IT “ Jon Proud, Operations Director

Despite the challenging times, Smart IT have continued with their apprenticeship program, increasing these opportunities is part of their ongoing strategy, recognising the benefits an apprenticeship provides for both the company and the apprentice. Like all businesses over the last year, Smart IT were not immune from challenges, the help desk team worked extremely hard in these difficult circumstances, assisting several thousand users to work remotely. Although onsite project work was put on hold, Smart IT were fortuitous not to lose any staff due to the pandemic, they kept their project engineers busy volunteering at local charities and helping out in the community where they could.

“I am exceptionally thankful and appreciate all the Smart IT staff for their efforts to make 2020 a success, many working out of hours to support clients throughout this time, along with field engineers, usually attending customers sites who supported the local community, carrying out deliveries to the vulnerable. I feel fortunate that we didn’t need to make any redundancies as a result of COVID-19” Tony Wilson MD

The growing IT company have big plans for 2021, with ambitious targets in place, aiming to achieve £4 million annual turnover. The focus for the year ahead is to increase the headcount, complete ISO27001 certification and branch out geographically with the opening of a second office.

Tony concludes: “We are eager to build on the success of 2020, with a strong leadership team in place, underpinned by a sound business model, I am confident we will achieve our ambitious targets for the year ahead. Along with the expansion plans with the opening of new premises to support Smart IT nationwide as our client base continues to grow.” Tony Wilson MD

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Smart IT .