Strong growth has seen big rise in profits for North East ICT provider

Smart IT provides infrastructure solutions, hardware and software, maintenance and support and deployment of telephony integration to SME clients across the public and private sector. Over the last year, profits have increased by 22%, with turnover nearing £2million.

Tony Wilson, Managing Director of Smart IT, said: “We’ve grown so quickly and been able to expand our customer base rapidly because we are a very people driven business. In my opinion, people buy people and I think that’s given us an edge in a pretty crowded market. Being smaller than some of our major competitors also enables us to make quick decisions and, in turn, focus on creating a high level of customer satisfaction through providing a more personable service.

“I think our differentiator is that we are not orientated around products – rather we use products to deliver the right service for clients. Many companies will try to shoe horn a product into a customer’s business, we try to find the best product for the customer’s needs. In short, we are one of the few mid-market IT providers in the region who is big enough to effectively manage client demand but small enough to really care about delivering a personal, bespoke customer experience.”

Tony Wilson started Smart IT by providing IT consultation to businesses needing independent and outsourced consultation from an IT professional. This type of support was not available from their current IT provider – existing providers were not able to provide consultative answers from an IT expert that would spend time understanding their business. As such, customers were left feeling like they were a small fish in a big pond with their only support from helpdesk engineers, who’s task it was to answer questions quickly over the telephone and not provide consultative solutions.

Meeting this gap in the market, Smart IT has grown quickly now employing just under 30 IT experts with a range of IT skills, with six employees members of the senior management team. The goal is to continue to expand the customer base and, in turn, increase staff numbers.

Tony added: “We aim to provide clients with a local, friendly and professional IT service that can deliver reliable bespoke solutions to individual customer needs through a team of IT experts. We want to be known as the partner of choice for small and medium sized businesses to help maximise their efficiency and productivity through the appropriate use and integration of technology.”

i.
Smart IT
Tony Wilson
0330 223 3525