smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

CRM and cloud-based application software company Bright Office launched in 2009 and is on course to double its turnover in 2011 to £500,000. SmallBusiness.co.uk talks to CEO Aaron Peake.

How did you get the idea?

I think that we recognised the importance of the Cloud software for businesses very early on. Traditional LAN (Local Area Network) based software restricts users to single sites or forces expensive private networks to be implemented. That type of software application offers no flexibility to organisations. I had previously developed LAN-based software and realised these restrictions and made the decision to make CRM applications which were accessible via the web.

How did you finance it?

At first, the only outlay was for the team of developers who assisted me when managing time between developing and selling became an issue. By that stage we already had a number of customers signed up to our solutions, so their subscriptions were providing the required funds. As the customer base has grown, so have the monthly subscriptions which has put us in the fortunate position to be able to self-sustain the organic growth we have experienced.

How did you market it?

Anything and everything! Old contacts, networking, advertising (traditional print, online forums, LinkedIn, etc), Google Adwords; you name it, we tried it. One thing that has always introduced us into new opportunities is recommendations. Customers are always keen to pass our details onto their contacts, which helps a lot.

What's next for the Bright Office?

At the start of 2010 we had 1000 clients subscribing to our CRM service, now this has risen to more than 1950. The result of this is that we have added four support and client management staff in recent months and we expect further growth. The Cloud market is buoyant and is going to be very big in the coming years, and we’re well positioned to service that demand.

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