Certeco Celebrates First Birthday With Huge Cup Cake Giveaway

LONDON, October 21, 2010 /PRNewswire/ --

- IT Company Secures Ten Top Financial Companies as Clients Within First Year

Certeco, the specialist business change consultancy, will spread a little sweetness in the City today by giving out cup cakes to busy commuters to celebrate its first birthday.

The company, which counts 10 of the largest financial organisations in the UK, including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and National Australia Group, among its clients, has grown rapidly since its launch last October.

Certeco will be dispatching a team of staff members dressed in bright blue City suits in the complete with bowler hats and umbrellas to give out the birthday cakes.

Chairman Adam Ripley said: "Sharing cake on our birthday is a symbol of friendship and fun. We wish to brighten up everyone's day and bring back a little of the kindness and friendliness that is getting lost in the City.

"And although there is much talk of the greed in the city, we think the greed is for cake and not money! Let's see if we are right."

Managing Director Gary Davies said: "We have much to celebrate. We have a profitable business turning over GBP10million per annum and know that based on the business model we have we can grow to have one of the UK's leading IT services companies in five years.

"In recent times we have seen some catastrophic failures in large IT projects. Our focus is on providing Governance and Quality Assurance that overarch the technical development of the systems, controlling and mitigating the risks and ensuring the projects stay on target and budget."

The company has offices in London, Ipswich and Edinburgh and has a workforce of over 100.

About Certeco:

Certeco is a UK based business services company specializing in Business Change Planning, Programme Management, Quality Management and Testing. It provides consultancy services to many of the UK largest businesses. Certeco go beyond the traditional boundaries of a software testing service by providing a more holistic approach to the IT business change lifecycle. In particular they offer services to the business departments implementing IT to enable them to manage and control IT implementations effectively. For more information, visit http://www.certeco.co.uk

Certeco - Press briefing

Certeco's Chairman, Adam Ripley has over 25 years experience in the consultancy services business. He was a co-founder of IS Integration which went on to be the UK's most successful software testing services company. He is available for comment and interviews on the following topics - IT Service Industry, Business Change Management, IT Quality Assurance, IT Consultancy Services, Financial Services Compliance and Business Technology Trends.

History

Certeco was formed in October 2009 by a group of highly experienced business consultants and IT business entrepreneurs who had spotted a gap in the market.

They founded Certeco to focus on providing business programme assurance and governance for large financial services organisations. The team recognised that many of these companies lacked the services and support needed to make their business change programmes successful. In particular, they aimed to help the business users in these organisations, who often struggle to support technology change whilst expanding and developing their business.

Managing Director Gary Davies was a Board member and shareholder in IS Integration before it was successfully merged into a multinational IT services company. More recently he was Head of Testing at Cognizant.

Graham Smith, the Operations and Consultancy Director, who worked with Adam and Gary at IS Integration until recently, was the head of a test consultancy practice in Cognizant and prior to that the Head of Europe for AppLabs.

Before forming Certeco, Richard Mossman (Finance Director) and Philip Tootell (Client Services Director) ran a successful IT services business called Programme Control. They have vast experience in large business systems integration projects having worked on some of the largest IT programmes including the RBS Nat West integration.

Services

Certeco provides a service that enables companies to plan, analyse, manage, test and deliver enterprise IT programmes, ensuring the systems are 'fit for purpose' before implementation in a 'live' business environment. The service complements, rather than replaces, the conventional IT service within an organisation, by working with a business department to enable it to manage, quality assure and accept the new systems being developed and/or integrated by the IT department. To achieve this Certeco works with IT department, suppliers and business users to bridge the gap, putting in place the practical elements required to make the system change successful.

Going 'Beyond Testing' is a Key Strategy

In recent times, many huge IT projects have failed as a result of testing and this failure has resulted in wide scale business problems. For this reason Certeco provide a specialist range of Testing Services. However, Certeco also understand that for the testing phase to be successful the complete process of governance and quality assurance must be in place, for this reason they go beyond testing, focusing their portfolio of services across the complete project lifecycle.

Clients and Sector Expertise - Banking, Financial Services and Insurance Sectors.

For more information please go to http://www.certeco.co.uk

SOURCE Certeco