Irish IT consulting firm IT Force reported a 30pc increase in year-end turnover to €4.5m, which was driven by its managed services and managed resources businesses.
Turnover is roughly split 50:50 between the two divisions. The company also announced its employee numbers had also increased and now numbers 55 people.
“Managed resources was only created two years ago in response to client demand, and already has a turnover in excess of €2m,” Joe O’Reilly, sales director for IT Force’s Managed Resources, explained.
“We have worked with a number of high-profile clients from the finance area, including Aegon SEI, KBC Bank and Irish Life & Permanent.
“We have also done a lot of work with Government, filling IT gaps where needed, for the Departments of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, Transport and Agriculture. We find increasingly that organisations are looking for short-term assignments where they can support existing staff or add specialist skills as required.
“We operate an ‘on tap’ model where we backfill the IT requirements quickly and expertly. This has proved very attractive to our customers,” said O’Reilly.
The managed services division has also enjoyed strong growth, winning business with Sante Medispa, Tynagh Energy and the Dublin Diocese.
“We find that business is steady, especially on the IT support side,” said Joe Molloy of IT Force. “Major projects have been put on hold unless they are absolutely necessary. Instead, organisations are looking for return on investment, either in terms of productivity or reduction of cost, or preferably a combination of the two,” Molloy added.
Smaller clients, he said, sometimes find that after the departure of an IT manager, planned or otherwise, outsourcing their entire IT department to IT Force can be cheaper than rehiring another individual.
This works particularly well for professional organisations where specialist applications are not an integral part of the IT mix according to Molloy.
In addition, larger companies are looking at ways to consolidate their investment in IT. “Companies with multiple servers are looking at virtualisation as a key technology to reduce costs,” he said.
“This is a very popular technology and we find many of our larger clients are actively working with us to reduce cost and carbon footprints in a single move. Unified messaging can also play an important role in streamlining an organisation; again reducing costs through VoIP calls.”
By John Kennedy
Pictured: Joe Molloy and Joe O’Reilly of IT Force
