Eight digital tech businesses from across the northeast of Scotland have seen growth milestones under Opportunity North East’s Digital Business Growth Programme.
These include launching new products, securing international contracts, and accelerating their growth ambitions for the sector.
The Digital Business Growth Programme, currently on its first cohort, sees the businesses undertake bespoke sessions to support development and create a high growth strategy. These sessions include leadership, building a culture of high-performance, finance strategies for scaling, brand strategy and international growth.
Each company also completes pitching and storytelling workshops, continuing with peer-to-peer learning in community sessions.
Businesses from the first cohort seeing success include STC Insiso, which has introduced new software products for different sectors; Solab IT, which has secured significant, multi-year contract wins; and Core 29, which has increased their team to support new and existing clients in the UK and overseas.
The programme, sponsored by partners Inoapps and Sword ITS, was launched earlier this year to accelerate growth among established digital tech businesses, with a focus on developing and implementing a growth strategy including new markets, new product development and building the team to deliver.
Pinnacle, one of eight businesses to take part, recently launched a new software product to improve operational efficiency in the construction industry. HomeCareApp helps homebuilders digitally snag, tag, and track issues across developments to speed up property handover and deliver a digital-first customer support experience that outperforms less efficient, traditional ways of working.
Managing Director at Pinnacle Kenny Steele said: “The concept for the product came about a couple of years ago in discussions with a national homebuilder about bottlenecks in their operations.
“The rate of digital acceleration due to Covid was the key enabler to push HomeCareApp forward and ONE’s Business Growth Programme came at the right time to give us the focus and support to see it through to launch.
“The programme was valuable in validating our approach and our product. A key learning aspect was the need to create a distinction between the overall leadership of the company and day-to-day operations to drive our team forward in the short-term while continuing to support our long-term ambition.
“As a result, we changed the operational structure of the business splitting the MD and Operations Director roles to ensure equal focus on running the business as well as product development strategy.”
Opportunity North East (ONE), which is behind the programme, is a private sector catalyst for economic diversification and renewal across North East Scotland.
ONE Digital Development Manager Jen Scott said: “It’s extremely encouraging to see eight north east companies build on their experience, create new products and have success in new markets as part of ONE’s Business Growth Programme.
“This marks fantastic progress for the initiative which provides leaders with tailored support to capitalise on the opportunities ahead and scale their business.”
Recruitment is underway for the second cohort of businesses for the programme, due to start in 4Q this year.
Source: DIGIT