ONE of Scotland’s fastest-growing tech companies, Administrate, has announced the opening of its first overseas office in the United States and the appointment of two key executives, including the former finance chief of Skyscanner, the Scottish $1 billion travel search group.
Edinburgh-based Administrate said it had opened its first international office in Bozeman, Montana, because North America was the fastest growing market for its web-based training management system, which automates the administrative burden for training providers. The company, which was launched in 2012, already has more than 270 customers in 30 countries.
“We think it’s a huge first step,” said Administrate founder John Peebles, 34, who was born in Athens, Tennessee, but brought up in Tianjin, China, where his father was running a training company. “America is going to be our largest market and it’s our fastest-growing market today. We’re always going to be a Scottish company and we’ll always be headquartered in Edinburgh. But we do need to be able to service our US base better than what we’re doing from our UK office.”
Mr Peebles said the firm had chosen Montana because some of its largest customers – including San Francisco-based identity management specialist ForgeRock – were headquartered on the US west coast. Other US clients include Ag Leader, a leading maker of precision farming products based in Iowa; Florida-based boat builder Boston Whaler – part of Brunswick Corporation, a manufacturing conglomerate listed on the New York Stock Exchange – and Illinois-based professional education specialist Becker Professional Education.
Montana was also cheaper than the west coast and felt a lot like Scotland. “It’s a wonderful place to live and work and has a wonderful workforce,” Mr Peebles added. “It has beautiful scenery just like Scotland and is a little bit small in terms of population like Scotland. It’s got a tradition of just hard work and it feels a bit like you’re on the frontier, which we like.”
Administrate believes that any business with more than a 100 staff who may need training is a potential customer. “There are something like 129,000 companies that fit that bill in the US, so it’s a very large market,” Mr Peebles said.
Learning management and e-learning are the fastest-growing segments of the $300 billion training services market and are worth around $7 billion and $100 billion respectively.
The company announced that Derek Gardner, the former head of finance at Edinburgh-based Skyscanner, had joined Administrate as chief financial officer as the business enters its next phase of growth.
Skyscanner co-founder and chief executive Gareth Williams is an investor in Administrate and recommended Mr Gardner to the firm.
“Gareth introduced us to Derek and we had a chat and really liked what he had to say,” Mr Peebles said. “We needed someone that we thought would be a slam dunk and it was just evident through the interview process that Derek was that man.”
Administrate has raised £3.6m in three funding rounds since 2011 from investors including Edinburgh-based business angel syndicate Archangels and Scottish Investment Bank, the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise. Turnover has been growing 70 per cent year-on-year, Mr Peebles said.
“We’ve got a huge market and need to go out there and capture it,” he added. “We’ve got really supportive shareholders who understand that our aim right now is to go for growth.”
Administrate has also hired Troy Michels as chief product officer. Mr Michels was previously chief technology officer at South Florida-based healthcare technology firm Sentry Data Systems, where he worked with Mr Peebles.
Administrate employs 40 people and is looking for at least six new technical staff in software engineering and development operations roles. The company’s cloud-based training management, learning management and online course booking system is said to halve the workload for training providers.
Other customers include Elsevier, the global sciences and health publisher, international accountancy firm PwC, the University of York, Swedish truck manufacturer Scania, and learndirect, the UK’s largest provider of skills, training and employment services.
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