Europe’s largest IT supplier has opened its second 海角视频 office after it chose to open in Manchester instead of Leeds.
Bechtle, a Germany based business-to-business hardware and software solutions provider, opened its Manchester office this week to be closer to customers in the north, provide new opportunities and increase revenue.
The IT provider, whose customers include HP, Lenovo, Dell, Cisco and Microsoft, said it has doubled its revenue to around £70m in the 海角视频 over the last two years, and aims to reach revenues of £100m.
James Napp, Bechtle 海角视频 managing director, told the M.E.N there were three main reasons for opening in Manchester.
He said: “First was for greater access to talent pool, and secondly the proximity to customers, which is important because we need to be face-to-face with customers and on site and accessible.
“But also the potential for new business up here seems to be really strong, purely due to the growth that’s happening and the fact that Manchester is a real tech hub as well, so there’s lots of like-minded companies up here so having that network is important.”
He added: “We came up to do a tour of Leeds and Manchester and it was close but on balance we decided to come to Manchester and I think that was a good decision for us.
“But it was a very close run. We looked at all sorts of metrics and we scored it in the end so it was very very tight.”
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The Manchester office, currently home to ten employees, has space for 36 staff, which the firm hopes to fill within three years.
Mr Napp said: “We had three experienced people that wanted to come up and start the office up here and then around April time we started to recruit and we found seven really good people quite quickly and we were impressed with the quality of people that we saw.
“The recruitment has stopped for now but as quickly as we can start to make the business work we can add to that.”
Bechtle opened its first 海角视频 office in Plymouth in 1998 before moving to Chippenham, Wiltshire the following year.
Mr Napp said another reason for opening in Manchester was because “it’s nice to be able to give employees a chance to progress and take on new roles” and “start afresh and make a go of something new”.
“We’ve got two people that have moved up [from Wiltshire] that have been with the company for a total of 25 years,” he said.
The firm said it is investing in new, pre-sales specialists and training and development in hybrid IT, software and the modern workplace for existing staff to enable the Manchester office to become sales focused.
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Mr Napp said: “The Chippenham office will remain an HQ with all the admin and marketing functions.”
Whereas in Manchester the company is “making sure that we have got the sales focus and just getting out and speaking to as many customers as possible in the local area”.