NCI Technologies hails education success

Cornish VAR has added £100,000 to its bottom line this year by focusing on schools

Cornwall-based VAR NCI Technologies has ended its financial year in style with a 25 per cent year-on-year increase in net profit.

The Microsoft Gold partner added £100,000 to its bottom line last year and saw its turnover peak at £2.4m.

The VAR has attributed its success to the run of deals it has secured in the education market, which include six new contracts in the past two months alone.

As a result, the firm is now in the throes of recruiting two new staff to join its six-strong team of dedicated school engineers.

Andy Trish, managing director of NCI Technologies, said contracts it has secured cover everything from thin-client and server deployments to whiteboard installations and Windows 7 rollouts.

"We are doing extremely well at the moment and are dealing with schools in London for the first time, which for a company based in the South West is quite an achievement," he explained.

"A lot of it is down to word of mouth, with teachers recommending us to their friends, IT co-ordinators and head teachers at other schools."

The deals the firm has secured are financed by the schools themselves or via trust funds, added Trish, rather than being awarded through public sector frameworks.

"There is a lot of pressure on schools to spend all the money they are allocated on an annual basis or risk losing it the following year," he explained.

"IT is being marked out as a key area of investment, and a lot of them are buying up the best kit they can afford, which means a lot of schools now have a better standard of IT than most offices."