Press release

Record year for ambitious Opencast

Mar 1, 2019

Helping the government find solutions to complex IT problems has helped propel a Newcastle software company to its most successful year.

Profits for Opencast Software rose by nearly 20 per cent on turnover of just under £5m for 2018, while the number of permanent members of the team has increased by 25 per cent, with 17 new members of staff taken on since last October.

“We’re expecting that trend to continue this year, with further expansion in terms of new clients, profit, staff and turnover,” explained CEO Mike O’Brien.

The company, which currently employs 65 members of staff, works with major companies and organisations, including Government departments, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Betfair, Newcastle Building Society, Barclays, Sage, RBS, and the NHS.

“We specialise in developing end-to-end enterprise solutions for UK and global businesses, and on the digitization of government data and services. Over the last year, that has included helping clients with their Brexit preparations,” said Mike.

“We’ve always been successful in retaining clients and expanding the work we do for existing clients, but our focus for 2019 will be attracting new clients, particularly in the finance sector and among government departments.

“Growth in the range and number of clients has been hugely satisfying over the past year and we’re confident that trend will continue in 2019. The increase in our provision of services to clients and our work in Whitehall have been important contributory factors to our growth. During the year ahead, we’ll continue to expand our services – providing more lives services, delivering more user research and helping more clients in the area of user experience.”

Ten people are posed for a group photo indoors, with some seated on a sofa and others standing behind. The setting features brick walls, blinds, and office-style lighting.

"A recruitment drive has added 17 new members of staff over the past five months. The new recruits fill a variety of roles, from developers and business analysts to automation testers and agile scrum masters"

End-to-end solutions

Opencast managing director Carl Shovlin added: “We made our name in the provision of first-class development and support services and we’re now also gaining a reputation in providing fully end-to-end enterprise solutions – from the initial discovery/design phase, through to the review and build phase and then providing first-class support.”

Opencast is known for its expertise in the field of agile methodology in software development, with scrum masters and agile teams embedded in clients including Newcastle Building Society, NHS, and major government departments.

“Our expertise and experience with agile has helped transform clients’ business practices and processes and I’m sure we’ll be delivering more and more end-to-end projects using our agile approach,” said Carl.

Opencast has been heavily involved in the Government’s Digital by Default project, providing an exemplar service to guide and coach the use of best practices. The company has also been working on Brexit preparation projects for the government, while at the same time helping the NHS to respond to major government reorganisation.

These major, complex projects and Opencast’s growing list of clients, led to a recruitment drive late last year which has added 17 new members of staff over the past five months. The new recruits fill a variety of roles, from developers and business analysts to automation testers and agile scrum masters. Most of them are from the north east.

“We’re proud to be a regional company with a national and international client base. It’s satisfying to know that we’re providing critical solutions and services to major organisations from our Byker base, bringing all of this work to the region. We’re not the biggest in terms of size, but we continue to win contracts with these huge global corporations, government departments and organisations,” said Carl.

“Our presence on several official government procurement lists of preferred suppliers gives clients of all sizes reassurances about our capabilities,” he added.

Build IT Right

Another project Opencast has been heavily involved in over the past few months is the inaugural Build It Right (BITR) Conference. Opencast’s Fiona Hobbs is leading the conference’s organising committee, and the event, aimed at the ‘do-ers’ in the region’s IT sector, will take place on Thursday, April 4 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Newcastle.

Mike explained the company’s involvement: “Build It Right has been one of the catchphrases of Opencast since we first began. The conference is aimed at the do-ers who are passionate about software development. It’s aimed at those at the coal-face of technology – the programmers and coders, the developers, testers and solution architects.

“We see Opencast as part of a regional, collaborative IT/digital sector, so supporting events like the BITR conference and organisations like Dynamo are important to us. The sector needs to work together to continue growing.”