Sword Ciboodle set sights on Chicago
Mike Hughes’s feet might be in Renfrewshire, but his eyes are firmly on the other side of the Atlantic. That is where Sword Ciboodle, the call centre software specialist that he runs from near Glasgow airport, is focusing as it prepares to open an office in Chicago next month. Formerly known as Graham Technology, the firm has been a long-time darling of the Scottish business pages.
A year ago the company decided to focus on the US, which accounts for about half of the $1.5 billion (£807 million) global demand for call centre technology. "Maybe we should have focused on it eight or nine years ago," Hughes admits, explaining that it held off because it wanted to perfect the Ciboodle product first. "It’s what we are focusing on now," he says.
The American market currently only accounts for between 10% and 15% of the company’s sales, compared with about 50% from the UK from clients such as Scottish Power and Scottish Water, plus chunks from South Africa, Indonesia, Australia and mainland Europe. Other clients include Vodafone, Friends Provident and South Africa’s Standard Bank.
The company decided to open in Chicago after winning a big contract in the city at the start of this year with retail giant Sears, even though it had no sales staff permanently based in North America. The deal is worth between £4 million and £5m over three years and covers 6000 software licences, with a view to improving Sears’s customer service.
Known as "seats" in industry parlance, Hughes says that the average for his business is 400 per deal. This was followed by a win in Boston with another news-shy company, this time worth between £650,000 and £750,000.
Such great pieces of business give clues as to why the company changed hands in March, when founder and former boss Iain Graham and his minority shareholders sold to French IT group Sword in a deal rumoured to have been worth £30m. Already a big cheese in the States with five offices, Sword was well positioned to take Ciboodle’s US offensive to another level. It would also have paid a much higher price now that Ciboodle looks set to increase annual turnover to around £25m after a few years stuck around the £15m mark.