Yorkshire reseller doubles headcount with US expansion

Smarter Business Processes MD opens up on first international office and where he next expects to expand

Wetherby-based Smarter Business Processes has opened its first US office in New York, marking its first international expansion.

The recent opening of its office in One World Trade Centre in New York came about because of a doubling of its headcount from seven employees to 14, according to MD Richard Rymill.

"The last two to three years has been exciting because things have gotten bigger and bigger for us," he told CRN. "We are now in a situation that we have people scattered across the globe."

"We considered Boston, LA and San Francisco as locations for our US office, but in the end NYC is the business capital of the US.

"We are quite close to a number of our clients there and we have a project manager who is based there and so we can react quickly to issues that may arise there."

Rymill attributed "right place, right time, right solution" for the increased headcount and predicts that there will be another doubling of headcount within the next 12 months.

Founded in 2013 by husband-and-wife team Richard and Gwen Rymill, Smarter Business Processes is both a consultancy and reseller for Smartsheet, which specialises in cloud-based collaborative spreadsheet software, and Appsheet, which links data stored in a spreadsheet to other devices.

Smartsheet is an alternative to Microsoft Excel, which allows for "real-time" collaboration between teams.

"Smartsheet has come along and given people a solution that looks like Excel, so they feel comfortable using it," explained Rymill.

"But the difference is that you can collaborate much more readily and can allocate tasks and work out to teams of people - the efficiencies it generates are absolutely huge."

The Smarter Business processes team is split between the US, UK and Canada, and Rymill is considering a further move to the southern hemisphere.

"We are doing a lot of work with a big Australian company and that is going very well and we've had a number of inquiries about Smartsheet over there," he said.

"I quite like the idea of doing something out in Australia, but there might not be quite enough demand there yet.

"However, the way things are going, it won't be long. I certainly expect Australian business to pick up."