NVT, Scotland's biggest IT independent, says its high-profile role in this summer's two huge sporting events has given it a platform for international growth.
The Lanarkshire-based group beat off competition from bigger global outfits to run the technology and communications for both the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup, and now plans to offer its expertise to international sporting events as well as to its UK customers.
NVT is already in formal discussions with the organisers of the next Commonwealth Games in Brisbane over its potential involvement, while reconnaissance is under way on the 2015 European games in Ajerbaijan and the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Managing director Stephen Park Brown said the company's commitment to corporate social responsibility as well as its performance in Glasgow had helped its cause with the "friendly" Commonwealth Games, while the technology it deployed on the golf course at Gleneagles had wider potential.
"We have already started discussions about how NVT can play a part in delivering what we did for 2014, in 2018 in Australia. We are led to believe they will have some documents available by the end of this year," Mr Park Brown said.
NVT's successful bid for the Glasgow games was helped by its promise to recruit students, the unemployed and apprentices, as well as workers from other IT firms, as volunteers with the opportunity to gain experience from the event.
At a ceremony last month endorsed by Glasgow 2014 and the city council, NVT honoured more than 200 volunteers who took part in a special presentation.
Mr Park Brown said: "We were hoping that having delivered the largest most successful Commonwealth Games and the most connected Ryder Cup that would give us the experience and the ability to be able to convince other countries and other sporting organisations that this is an area we now have expertise in."
The company's technical director Tom Mitchell was about to head for Brazil to find out what lessons had been learned from this year's World Cup, while the company had also been approached by Formula 1 to discuss its technology.
"At the Ryder Cup we developed an app which was wireless on course. We are looking to see whether we can use that type of technology on other sporting events at future large-scale events. There won't be as much cabling and it will be about delivering these events more cheaply."
Mr Park Brown said new sporting connections would be significant for the company's growth as they would enable NVT to extend its reach to the international operations of its existing Scottish clients, such as Glasgow-based patent attorney Murgitroyd which works across a dozen countries. "We are currently delivering on a number of projects across the globe for Clyde Blowers Capital. We have a huge export opportunity."
NVT saw turnover slip from £10.6m in 2011 to £7.8m in 2013 and pre-tax profit from £687,000 to £373,000, according to Companie House accounts. It maintained employment at 73, and lifted its shareholder funds from £606,000 to £749,000.
Mr Park Brown, who co-founded the business 22 years ago with chairman Alfred Weir, said: "Over the next 24 months the company expects to grow sales by around 25 per cent and we expect most of that business to come outwith Scotland."
He said NVT intended to become the first IT company to adopt the new Investors in Young People standard.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article