Factonomy aims to up turnover to £60m

PHIL Rugani, the new American chief executive of Musselburgh-based software firm Factonomy, has unveiled plans to grow turnover more than ten-fold to £60 million in the next two years by targeting financial services firms.

Rugani, 54, has already set about building a field office network in the United States, including sales, marketing and technical support staff.

He is opening two offices in the New York area, one in Boston and one in Silicon Valley and expects to have grown the company's workforce in the US to about 30 within the next six months.

Factonomy's "business continuity management" software helps firms carry on operating in emergencies, such as earthquakes, fires or power cuts.

Rugani - whose mother is from the village of Seafield, near Bathgate, in West Lothian, and who spent childhood holidays in Scotland - said: "We need to have a strong presence in America because that's where the biggest banks are based."

Rugani, who is based in New York but will spend one or two weeks a month in Scotland, was introduced to Factonomy by one of its existing banking clients and agreed to join the firm after "hitting it off" with co-founder and chief technology officer Graeme Bryce.

He added: "A lot of my job will be out there meeting customers and analysts and so it makes sense for me to be in New York. The Musselburgh operation will primarily be research and development."

Despite the effort being put into courting the American market, Rugani - who bought a 10 per cent stake in the business, which is also backed by Barclays Capital, Sigma Innovation Fund and Scottish Enterprise - said he was committed to keeping its head office in Scotland.

Rugani was previously vice president for the Americas at IBM following its acquisition in 2006 of his previous software company, FileNet, for $1.6 billion (983m).

Factonomy has already carried out work for Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered and Sykes Global Services, the Edinburgh-based customer contact centre operator.