The ICT Professional: Scott Haddow, Trustmarque

Infrastructure and software solutions Value Added Reseller Trustmarque says its positive full year results last week show how its core message around efficiency and cost savings are hitting home with public sector customers.

 

“The only conversations we are having with CIOs in the sector is about increasing efficiency and removing cost,” its chief executive Scott Haddow told PublicTechnology.net last week.

 

“And we are having lots of good conversations.”

 

Showing off? Given that he was talking the day his firm reported the most successful set of results in the York-based firm’s 24 year history, perhaps his confidence can be forgiven.

 

The firm’s 2010-11 full year showed a 35% increase in profit before tax and a 26% growth in gross profit compared to the previous year – with turnover also climbing, from £107m to £115m. (The company says public sector accounts for about 50% of all its business, with customers ranging from central, local and NHS customers.)

 

Its services business increased in revenue by 176% from £7.1m to £19.6m, with gross profit for services also up, from £1.1m to £2.9m, an increase of 164%.

 

And he’s not stopping with the year just gone: “Notwithstanding the uncertain economic conditions and budget constraints in UK public sector, Trustmarque is poised for another record breaking year in 2011/2012,” he adds.

 

However, Haddow says that the company’s acquisition of Cloud infrastructure and hosted services provider Nimbus Technology Systems, adding a suite of Cloud and managed solutions to its offering to enable a greater degree of customisation and customer alignment, has yet to translate to major wins:

 

“Cloud is very much part of the ‘conversation’ I’m talling about, but I have to say it’s still really at the level of that, not big uptake in our markets – so far, at least.”

 

More significant has been the company’s focus on software solutions and associated services to help increase efficiencies and reduce cost.

 

That confidence is also reflected in the fact that, in sharp contrast to much vendor news at the moment, his team has just taken up occupancy of a significantly larger property for its HQ, moving to “state of the art new offices to accommodate its rapidly growing workforce as a direct result of its vigorous recruitment drive”.

 

It’ll be interesting to see if this time next year Trustmarque will be quite as bullish – but it is impressive that the firm sees such huge potential in the sector.