2010 was a very busy year for Future Processing and one in which we broke many of our own records. While many companies reported poor results due to customers tightening their belts we found the opposite. Not only did most of our customers increase the scope of their work with us, we also won clients in new markets, like France and the US.

Consequently we ended up doubling the size of our workforce and setting new, markedly different, growth targets. I think we are not alone in our success. Analysts predicted that in 2010 and beyond outsourcing mega deals would become less favourable as organisations move to smaller contracts with more niche players in order to improve the value they get. We provide a specialist service: a certain type of high quality software development that provides a real alternative to parts of the mega deal and I believe we have benefitted from this. Analysts also predicted that as part of general belt-tightening companies would be more likely to outsource key commodity IT functions, like support, in a bid to save money.  I am not so sure that our success can be closely linked to this however, as we are a specialist software company not a commodity IT outsourcer.  Yet cost cutting remains one of the top three reasons organisations choose to outsource to us.

So, do I think our growth will continue at the same rate as in 2011? While I can’t say about the rate, we do have a healthy number of customer projects in the pipeline. As the trend away from megadeals is set to continue for some time, I expect businesses will continue to look to small – mid-tier companies like us. IT budgets are no longer being cut but that doesn’t signal to bring development in house. Instead I think we will see investment in IT systems that has been on hold for the past couple of years. Some of these systems will also need bespoke software to integrate with other applications and interfaces on the corporate network.

Some of that development may well be outsourced too. As long as we continue to put quality first, in all our work and add real value to our customers, then I think 2011 should be another good year for Future Processing.