AN INFORMATION technology consultancy business has used a contract to deliver large-scale IT transformation for Disclosure Scotland as a springboard to open a Scottish office, with a view to recruiting 70 staff by the end of 2018.
BJSS has already recruited twelve staff in Glasgow, and company director James Whitehouse said as many as 30 would eventually be recruited on what was “quite a big project” for the Scottish Government agency, which awarded the contract in January.
This includes a head of delivery, who will be recruited from the local area to spearhead growth.
Leeds-based BJSS was founded in 1993, and turns over more than £70 million, but has never before had a presence north of the Border.
“Scotland gives us access to big clients that we already work with in other areas of the business, such as Lloyds and RBS,” said Mr Whitehouse. “But also to try and get a different part of the business growing, so it’s an obvious choice for us, being a UK consultancy, to branch out into Scotland and try and build a successful business there.”
He said the contract with Disclosure Scotland was progressing well, with the focus on security and data protection “front of centre of what we do and how we work”.
Mr Whitehouse said the timing of the Glasgow office opening had no bearing on Scottish Independence falling off the political radar. “As a business it would be difficult to find other companies that have succeeded and rallied so strong with all the uncertainty that is going on. Since Brexit our business has taken off. The Scottish referendum just didn’t play a part in our thinking.
“We were looking for the opportunity to get up here. That opportunity presented itself and we went for it. Uncertainty around political environment would affect some companies but we see opportunity in everything.”
With almost 800 employees, BJSS operates in six UK cities and has a US presence in New York.
The company delivers software solutions to a wide range of industries, including financial services, where it delivered a trade reporting system to the London Stock Exchange. It also developed a global oil pricing system.
Mr Whitehouse said the business had received no grant funding to open in Scotland, adding that the company’s ethos was to recruit local staff and help grow local economies.
He said that recruiting a Scottish head of delivery to report to the main board would give that person the ability to identify and drive what the company is doing in Scotland, “as they will have better insight”.
The business has signed up to the Scottish Government’s Scottish Business Pledge, while Mr Whitehouse said BJSS was developing relationships with Codebase, Datalab and ScotlandIS.
“The approach of the business is to give people the space to build and grow their own parts of the business,” he said. “Scotland feels different to other parts of the UK. You see how closely aligned the Scottish Government is to local business, how supportive organisations such as Datalab, Codeclan or Scotland IS are.”
Scottish Government minister for business, innovation and energy, Paul Wheelhouse, added: “BJSS’ plans to create 70 local jobs within its new Scottish hub shows the strength of the financial and business services sector in Scotland and is great news for the local economy in and around Glasgow.”
Ultimately, Mr Whitehouse said he hoped the Glasgow office would be as big as others in the company.
“London has 220 staff, others have 80 or 90,” he said. “I’d like [Glasgow] to be at least the same as some of those and as it develops in the coming years that is very doable. We have big plans for it.”
He highlighted the commitment to using local staff, adding: “There are other people, and what they have done when they’ve come to Scotland is create a presence but then just focused on flying people in and out which doesn’t follow our philosophy but also isn’t good for the local economy.”
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