Insider Media Limited

The chief executive of IT solutions group Onyx has told Insider that the Midlands is next on his expansion hit-list. Neil Stephenson says the region offers good opportunities for Onyx and is the next logical step in his ambitious plans to roll the company out across the UK. He also has his eye on moving into the North West.

It is his eventual aim that customers will never be more than two hours away from an Onyx centre.

He said: “There are a number of geographic expansion areas we would like to be in. The North West as well as the Midlands are fertile grounds for us and we’re looking to do something there.

“They are big conurbations with lots of companies we could be trading with. We already have customers there and there are market opportunities to expand. That’s where were looking in terms of the next step.

“We’re adding offices all the time as we go. The national proposition is really important to us. The bigger we get, the stronger the business gets. It’s a work in progress.”

Stockton-headquartered Onyx has seven operations across the UK in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stockton, Gateshead and London, including a base at the heart of the financial district, which supplies the company with the majority of its customer base in the capital.

The company has a workforce of 113 spread across the UK, and a client base of about 3,000. Onyx reported an annual turnover of £15m last financial year, an increase of 30 per cent from the previous year.

And he believes that Onyx can only get stronger as companies become more increasingly reliant on IT.

He added: “There is now a lot more regulation and compliance, and companies are using IT a lot more. In the past, IT was perceived as nice to have, but if it didn’t work it was okay. Now the world has moved on and pretty much everybody totally relies on IT and the focus is on quality of service rather than on price.

“We’ve just invested quite heavily in cloud technology. It requires data centres and networks and we have both of those so we are in a really good place.

“There is a lot of doom and gloom around at the moment but I think it’s a load of rubbish. The world’s pretty good out there if you have a good proposition and can understand your customers’ needs.”