A Blyth business firm has doubled its capacity and workforce after support from capital growth grants helped it secure two new contracts worth more than £13m.
UK document management company Cleardata has created more than 100 jobs in the last year, taking its workforce to 270, after £155,794 from the North of Tyne Growth Fund put it on target for its biggest contracts to date with the NHS.
The firm has expanded into two adjacent units, leading to the new employees, and upgraded equipment and infrastructure in investment totalling £1.4m.
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Cleardata managing director David Bryce said the firm has won a £3m digital mailroom deal as well as a £10.7m contract with Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which runs hospitals and community services in Northumberland and North Tyneside.
With his sights set on larger contracts Mr Bryce said he needed to scale Cleardata quickly to compete with bigger companies for the work.
Seeking support to offset the risk, he was introduced to the North of Tyne Growth Fund, a £4.6m investment programme part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and supported by the North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA).
He said: “Without the help it would have put the project more at risk. There is a lot of capital risk involved in scaling your business up this quickly and ensuring you can invest in the right technology, as well as managing the finances at the same time is key. The North of Tyne Growth Fund has enabled us to take that risk with a bit more confidence.
“Winning the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust contract was an important gamechanger for the business. Local support to help win a local contract for a local business is always good news.”
The company can help businesses transform manual processes, such as sorting and validating incoming documents, both physical and digital, using clever software and even utilising a digital workforce of software robots. This can free up valuable staff time, significantly reduce overheads and increase productivity, which is key in the current marketplace where many business costs are increasing.
The Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust deal will see the company convert more than 1.2m traditional paper records into digital versions over a three-year period as part of the NHS digital transformation plan.
As well as securing the contract, the investment has created many other benefits, including an improved working environment and using the latest technologies. Cleardata has also set up a new training academy to nurture talent and upskill its rapidly expanding workforce, and further expansion is also being explored.
Mr Bryce said: “It’s taken us to the next level scale-wise. It enabled us to win a big £3m digital mailroom contract. Because when people are asking, ‘can you cope with this amount of work, upheaval and change’, and you can demonstrate you’ve got a project like this up and running and employed that many people successfully so quickly, it helps you win more contracts.
“The world’s your oyster in terms of what you can do with digital transformation. We’re now looking at more buildings because we’re growing so fast.”
“We really appreciate the support we’ve had from the North of Tyne Growth Fund. I think it’s important to help businesses take risk and create jobs – and in this instance, we’ve created more than we said we were going to, by far.
Metro Mayor Jamie Driscoll said: “Too often, small businesses are pushed out of winning public sector work. It’s great to see that our funding has helped Cleardata to grow and prosper and ultimately win two major contracts. It’s another success story from the North of Tyne Growth Fund, which we set up to help small and medium-sized enterprises, across our region, to grow and create jobs.”
Mike Baker, senior project manager of the North of Tyne Growth Fund, added: “The way Cleardata has tackled these two projects to rapidly scale-up its business with new buildings and recruiting 100 people in eight months is impressive. The investment has clearly paid off, and we encourage other businesses with similar ambitions to get in touch to see how we can support your capital investment projects.”
Neville Bearpark, head of grant services at UNW LLP, said: “It is excellent to see the expansion and job creation at Cleardata as a result of this significant investment. As the new contracts show, it was clearly the right decision to support this ambitious company in its bid to keep up with demand.”
