AN IT business is poised for growth after securing grant aid worth £75,000 from the North West Development Agency.
SystsemHost Ltd, of Carnforth, gained the enterprise grant the maximum available to help fund further business growth.
The firm offers a managed IT service for small and medium-sized businesses, in effect becoming a client's entire IT department.
The NWDA fund aims to help businesses put innovative ideas into practice, and the agency is particularly keen to encourage IT projects.
Under its plans, SystemHost aims to create an extra 20 skilled IT and sales posts in the Carnforth area by the end of 2007.
The business has also been awarded the BS7799 standard, which recognises that the firm properly safeguards employee, customer and commercial data.
SystemHost's clients include estate agents, manufacturing, construction and civil engineering sectors.
One of its latest customers is the Ultimate Plum Pudding Company, which has streamlined its IT systems and improved productivity.
The Kendal business, which makes more than 100 tonnes of pudding a year, has seen the supply of puddings to fund-raisers as a major growth area.
However, its dependence on its IT systems to fulfil these orders, and the departure of its IT manager, who left to live in Slovakia, resulted in the business turning to SystemHost.
"We were used to working remotely by phone, but we were still doing a lot of problem-solving ourselves, sometimes with phone instruction and sometimes by dealing with software support lines," said director Carole Taylor.
"It was very time consuming for me personally, and we didn't have the skills in-house to ensure this was done efficiently and effectively. As well as taking the management of the whole network off-site and off our hands, the most important factor in our decision to change was that SystemHost provided a really secure, guaranteed back-up for our data."
The Ultimate Plum Pudding Company sells puddings to well-known stores such as Lakeland Limited and Harvey Nichols, as well as quality delicatessens and caterers.
"But our main business comes from fund-raising puddings. We supply fund-raisers such as hospices, church groups and charities, with a minimum order of two dozen, with labels printed with the fund-raisers' logo.
"We sold 200,000 of these last year. Because we design and print everything in-house, we are totally dependent on our IT systems in order to fulfil these orders."
With the business now having access to a round-the-clock helpdesk, staff are now free to concentrate on the business.
"We've even been able to email the bank manager for the first time in three years! We were constantly having our emails blocked and couldn't work out why.
"SystemHost sorted out the problem and now we're up and running smoothly. I don't know how they solved the problem, but I don't need to know. They're managing the systems and we can get on with growing the business."
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