IT consultant benefits from oil and gas cost cuts

An Aberdeen IT consultant is predicting a surge in turnover as oil and gas firms turn to its services to help cope with the industry downturn.

Jaye Deighton, left, with Core29 founder Sarah Forbes. Picture: Ross Johnston

Core29, launched in 2012 by Sarah Forbes, is on track to see turnover jump 50 per cent to £500,000 in the current financial year after contracts with the likes of Ashtead Technology, Peterson, PD&MS and Qinterra led to a stream of new business leads.

Forbes said: “With the industry focused on efficiency there are huge opportunities for companies like us who can demonstrate immediate, tangible results.

“Oil & Gas UK is taking the lead on pan-industry initiatives to make the sector more competitive and its efficiency task force has identified business process as a key theme. This chimes with what we have been doing with clients for the last couple of years: reviewing day-to-day operations to see how they can be done much more efficiently and then design the IT systems and processes to achieve the efficiencies or savings.”

Core29 senior project manager Jaye Deighton added: “For SMEs, the big-name systems providers offer packages which are often too complex and expensive for what they need to do – when what they already have could simply be re-evaluated and tweaked to work better for them.

“Rather than asking them to completely rebuild their systems at huge expense, it’s key that we collaborate with our clients to develop new processes, train the team and then hand over to them knowing the efficiency improvements we’ve achieved will improve profitability.”