Ergo Named Company of the Year
Ergo winning two industry awards caps an extraordinary year for leading IT services company.
Ergo walked away with two of the top prizes at the most prestigious event in the Irish IT industry calendar this month, confirming its position as one of the most successful IT services companies in the country and showing a resolute determination to stay at the leading edge over 20 years after it was founded.
Winning Company of the Year at the 2016 Tech Excellence Awards is an indicator of the extraordinary period the company has been through. Since last June, Ergo has acquired two companies, iSite, a CRM specialist and IT resource provider, and Micromail, one of the largest Microsoft Licensing Solutions Providers in Ireland; sold its interest in Fenergo; spun out new start-up FlowForma; and has seen a 40-per-cent growth in turnover in its financial year.
“It’s a huge honour that a judging panel made up of such renowned names from our industry chose us for this award,” said John Purdy, CEO of Ergo. “Our success comes down to the quality of our people. We have one of the largest and most highly accredited teams of engineers and IT professionals on the island of Ireland, and they never waiver from their commitment to delivering the best possible results for our customers.”
Job creation has been another part of the Ergo success story. Headcount is now 335, consisting of 215 permanent and 120 contract staff, up 65 from the same time last year and with plans to recruit a further 55 permanent staff by 2017. Ergo provides an increasing range of IT services that encompass cutting-edge cloud services as well as on-premise solutions. An exponent of what Gartner calls “bi-modal IT”, Ergo helps organisations maximise their existing investments while leveraging more agile infrastructure and services from the cloud.
Wrapped around everything is Ergo’s commitment to driving business transformation and providing ongoing support through its managed services. “Our propositions are based around two principles: transform and divest,” explained Jimmy Sheehan, managed services director. “We help businesses transform themselves with IT solutions and, at the same time, offer them the opportunity to divest themselves of the responsibility of maintaining and managing the technology.”
Ergo is also a leader in IT resourcing, placing high-calibre candidates in businesses where they can excel. And it has the longest established managed print service (MPS) practice in Ireland, which is increasingly focused on innovative document management solutions. “Organisations are still wasting money on print and missing the opportunity to explore the efficiencies that digital workflow delivers,” said Jason Quinn, general manager of the MPS business.
The second award that Ergo won at the 2016 Tech Excellence Awards was for Private Sector Project of the Year, a deployment of Microsoft Office 365 for Greencore, the multinational convenience food manufacturer. The successful migration of 3,800 staff from legacy products to a cloud-based platform, highlights Ergo’s technical prowess on large-scale projects. In this case, it spanned 40 sites in Ireland, the UK and the US, and was carried out as a phased deployment to avoid any disruption to the business. What made this and other Ergo projects successful was the focus on bringing all employees along on the journey. “The change management piece is very important,” said John Purdy. “Only when employees are actively engaged and using our solutions will we consider the project a success.”
John Purdy was on hand at the Tech Central gala dinner in Dublin earlier this month to collect the awards. He was struck by the calibre of the judging panel, which this year included Peter McManamon and Seán Baker, serial entrepreneurs who were in at the start of great Irish tech companies Parthus and IONA respectively.
Although Ergo is primarily a services business, John Purdy feels an affinity with early stage entrepreneurs and often describes his company as “permanently in start-up mode”, constantly evolving to stay ahead of a fast-changing industry.
