IT MAINTENANCE expert Smart Capital Technology (SCT) has marked its 20th year in business with three award wins and expansion into Scandinavia.
The Reading company has grown from its 2002 launch with a small team offering hardware support to having more than 80 staff and 44 locations across the UK, Europe and the US.
It now provides parts and engineers to replace and repair broken business-critical networks to IT suppliers who support an extensive range of organisations – from household brands to industrial businesses – who need connectivity to networks or servers.
SCT was the subject of a management buyout earlier this year and the deal that clinched the buyout won the Deal of the Year Award at the Insider Thames Valley Dealmakers Awards, held at Reading FC. The judges said it was “difficult to look beyond this classic local deal involving a full suite of local advisers and supporting a local company”.
They said private equity investor WestBridge’s backing of SCT solved succession issues and ensured the continued success of the business.
The buyout won the company two more awards, Mid-Range Deal and Corporate Deal of the Year, at The Business Magazine’s Thames Valley Deals Awards in November.
“It’s an important trio of awards for us and particularly apt as SCT marks its 20th anniversary, so we are delighted,” said chief executive Andy Morgan. “We’ve seen a real uplift since the buyout, both in terms of new clients and expansion of the services we offer to clients, such as our Device as a Service, which we are rolling out now.”
The new service will offer clients, particularly in retail, immediate replacement of devices such as iPads, headsets and touchscreens, when they break to limit the impact on their business.
The company is also expanding into Scandinavia with new hubs opening in Norway, Finland, Sweden – as well as a new base in Zurich. The hubs will be storage for parts to enable engineers to meet response time targets as low as four hours.
“One of the reasons we are celebrating 20 years in business is that we have built this fantastic reputation for rapid response,” said Mr Morgan. “These new hubs will enable us to maintain and enhance that reputation by making sure the parts we need are closer to the businesses who need them.”
The company won its first major contract to repair Cisco, Nortel and Siemens devices in its first year of trading and by 2008 had 13 storage and distribution locations. In 2009 it won its first European contract and by 205 had opened its first European hubs.
SCT became an authorised Cisco partner in 2015 and opened its build, testing and staging centre in Reading two years later. In 2018 it opened its first storage and distribution locations in the US.
“We’ve come a long way in 20 years, growing from supporting England to Scotland and Ireland and then moving into Europe and the US,” said Mr Morgan. “We have built up our investment in spares that are still actively used in the market, and that gives us a competitive edge, but we have also added talent and experience within our engineering and sales teams and that has brought us to this point.”
He said the future will see more expansion and an ambition to bring in more talented staff. “Our people are our future and as we continue to grow and develop our customer base we are going to be investing in engineers and always expanding forwards.”
