Communications business finds it’s good to talk

COMMUNICATIONS business Emerald Group has grown its turnover to nearly £1m after embarking on an 18-month focus on improving the business.

The company, which employs 15 people in Leamington Spa, works with SMEs to make better use of technology. It has also had the same focus internally, with its major project resulting in the development of its own customer relationship management system.

This enabled Emerald to replace its manual ticketing system for support services with an automated solution which allows for analysis of and subsequently improvements to its customer work.

The company’s progress was also helped by the involvement of Jav Mohammed, an organisational development specialist, as part of a £15,000 investment in training.

“We recognised 18 months ago that if we really wanted to achieve our growth ambitions, we needed to make sure that everybody in the team was motivated towards the same goal,” said Emerald Group’s chief executive Sarah Windrum.

“That’s why we brought in Jav Mohammed to engage and motivate the team and ensure that everyone realises how important their role in the business is. It’s easy to hire and develop great individuals but it’s far more effective to develop a great team. That’s been the key to our success over the last year and a half.”

The group’s sales have more than doubled during the length of the programme, with turnover rising from £400,000 to £950,000 and gross profit nearly doubling to £180,000.