10:39am Friday 27th January 2012
By Julie Hayes
EXPANDING York IT business Trustmarque has said it intended to keep employing through 2012 after releasing its best results in 24 years.
The business, based at Monks Cross, has increased the number of employees from 118 to about 180 in 2011 and extended its premises to allow for further growth.
After recording a 35 per cent increase in pre-tax profit, and increasing turnover from £107 million to £115 million, the business is expecting at least double digit growth again next year if not another record performance.
Chief executive Scott Haddow said since his appointment in 2009, they had restructured the business to focus on its services business, helping clients to reduce cost and improve efficiency, rather than simply selling software. The growth was driven by the growing services business, which increased revenues from £7.1 million to £19.6 million and gross profit from £1.1 million to £2.9 million.
He said: “This is the culmination of all the changes in the business and the fact that we went through the pain of restructuring and transformation a couple of years ago.
“We were always expectant of results like this.”
Angelo di Ventura, group sales and marketing director, said the business would be taking on more employees as they found people with the right skills, as well as recruiting to fill five specific roles currently available at the business.
“Our business relies on people and information. We hire people, that’s our biggest asset, and we help impart information to customers so they can make better decisions. We are always looking for good people and there’s not enough around so if we find people, we will hire them.”
He said the increased employment, particularly in the York office, joined through its graduate scheme and the business has set up a Learning and Development Academy to train staff to help support the business’s future growth, such as creating a corporate accounts team to balance the company’s public and private sector client mix.
Mr Haddow said the business was looking at some potential acquisition targets, but that they were comfortable of achieving the growth organically.
He said: “2011 was an excellent year for the company thanks to the investments made in people, training and developing our service offerings.
Notwithstanding the uncertain economic conditions and budget constraints in UK public sector, Trustmarque is poised for another record breaking year in 2011/2012.”
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