With another year over, we thought we’d reflect on what’s happened throughout 2019 in Kick ICT. It’s been an exciting and successful year for our business and we hope that the same momentum can continue through 2020.
Our Journey
One of the most monumental moments this year was our transition from Castle and Talon to Kick ICT Group Ltd. After many years of trading as our legacy brands, we knew it was time for a change. Along with a new name we also launched our brand, new website and moved into our new home.
Our People
As our lease on the Castle office expired on the 7th of October, we took this opportunity to acquire new Headquarters and move into a larger premises. This has become our new primary operational hub for our customers and base for all our group employees.
Throughout the year we have welcomed a number of new members of staff to our highly skilled and talented team and appointed key positions such as Head of HR and Head of Marketing. As our business continues to evolve, naturally our team will continue to grow accordingly.
Events
Attended:
NHF Housing Finance – showcases the latest innovative technology, from financial management software to mobile working and tenant self-service solutions. This is one of the biggest events in our Housing calendar and is aimed to help customers through their transformation journey through our integrated solutions delivered by our team.
CHC Finance Conference – a long standing ‘must attend’ event for finance professionals, board members, leaders across the social housing sector. This event seeks to inform and inspire whilst encouraging networking and sharing the best practice with fellow sector professionals.
Business Transformation in Housing Exhibition and Conference – in our current economic and political climate, housing associations have come under increasing pressure to do more with less. Business across this sector recognise the need to transform their business and do things differently to build organisations with people at their core. With key speakers, pioneering case-studies and visionary digital business leaders, this event will provide tangible examples to apply your own strategy.
SFHA Finance Conference – this conference gives you the opportunity to meet with housing professionals from a range of organisations, consider a diverse range of products and services available, initiate contacts which may lead to worthwhile partnerships and learn about the work of other housing associations/co-operatives.
CDN Finance & HR Annual Conference – this conference aims to bring together finance and human resource professionals from across Scotland and gives time to reflect over the past year and show they are not alone in addressing the challenges faced by the FE sector. This also provides a good opportunity for delegates to informally network with colleagues across Scotland as well as a number of sponsor organisations.
Hosted:
SunSystems User Day – this is an event hosted in honour of our SunSystems customers as a thank you for all their valued business. Our user day allows us inform our customers on the development of SunSystems but also provide insights to what’s been happening in our business.
Housing User Day – this is one of our major events in the social housing calendar that provides an excellent opportunity to showcase our newest technologies, chat to our ever-growing customer base and keep up to date with the latest challenges affecting housing associations.
Nominations & Achievements
Over the course of the year our business has been able to achieve some noteworthy achievements for Kick ICT:
Our CEO Tom O’Hara received a nomination for a finalist in this year’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year. This is a unique global program that supports entrepreneurs unlock their ambitions by recognising entrepreneurial achievement among individuals and companies that demonstrate vision, leadership and success and work and we couldn’t be happier that one of our own were nominated for such an achievement.
We were also chosen as a finalist in this years Business Insider Deals and Dealmakers Awards for the series of deals made as part of our strategy to create the largest independent IT business based in Scotland.
Following on from our acceptance to G Cloud 10 framework last year, we were delighted to secure our place on G-cloud 11. This is a framework agreement out together by the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) which supports the Government policy to centrally manage the procurement of common goods and services through an integrated commercial function at the heart of the government.
We have also been able to witness financial growth where our annual turnover has gone from £7m in 2018 to in excess of £13m in 2019. Through continued development of our business, Kick will continue to grow, acquire and maintain a sustainable business scale across the UK through our profitability, cash reserves and outstanding backing from the HSBC.
Summary
2019 was another fantastic year, we managed to create new relationships with customers, welcome several new members of staff, our sales team smashed targets and the year ended with another landmark event of moving premises and obtaining our new home.
We also hosted and attended several events where our customers had the opportunity to engage with our experts and network with one another. Kick also received nominations from Business Insider, Ernst & Young ans secured our place on G-cloud 11. We only hope that we can achieve the same or better success throughout 2020.
Finally, a very Happy New Year to you all! We feel honoured to have been of service to you over the last year and can’t wait for the next one with new goals and greater success.