44 . Glasgow Business July/August 2013
MEMBER PROFILE Seric Systems
Seven proves a lucky number
From a fledging start-up, launched with help from a charity grant, Seric Systems has become a multimillion- pound enterprise providing wide-ranging IT services
Stuart Macdonald, Managing Director, Seric Systems S
eric Systems has come a long way from its days as a Prince’s Scotish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT) start-up, which began with a
£700 grant and a loan of £700. “Last year we had a turnover of £7 million,” said Managing Director Stuart Macdonald. It has been a remarkable rise for a company
which was incorporated in 2001 and took on its first employee to join founder Macdonald in 2002, a growth path that has been recognised in a string of awards. A milestone in the development of the
business came in 2003 when Seric became an IBM Business Partner. It is a relationship that has grown since
and the major part of Seric’s business is in IT infrastructure – it is a hardware provider and since 2009, Seric has been a Premier Business Partner of IBM. Tis year saw Seric Systems travel to Las
Vegas as a finalist for IBM’s Business Partner Awards, picking up a Global Award for Technical Excellence. While the IT infrastructure business is
central to what it does, Macdonald stresses that it is far from the only string to Seric’s bow as he leads a constant drive to have the business climb the value chain. Another major strand of the business, and
one that Macdonald presented on at Glasgow Chamber’s Tink Digital Scotland event as part of Scotland’s Technology Show at the SECC in June, is social business. Macdonald and his team are at the leading
edge of an area that is going to be critical for businesses as adoption of social business platforms becomes more and more widespread. Tese platforms are like a collection of tools
people may be familiar with, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox and Twiter and some lesser-known ones, but for using internally and externally dealing with their existing customer
“Risks to a company’s IT system can not only come externally from a hacking attack or a virus, but also internally”
increasingly significant business stream which involves mining and analysing a company’s data to produce trends that are instructive for the business. It is another important tool which allows
businesses to measure different parts of what they do – say, their interactions with customers – and draw out important lessons, either pointing out unseen weaknesses in the business or suggesting areas for growth or refinement of existing processes. Te fourth main area of Seric’s business
is IT security. Macdonald explains that Seric is employed by a number of companies to work on niche security elements of their computer and data systems. Quite oſten this is role is one of ‘watching
base and prospective customers or clients. Seric’s social business consultancy looks
at how social business tools can be used to capture the ideas and knowledge among a company’s employees and leverage it to develop new products, services or processes to increase the enterprise’s performance. Macdonald predicts that social business
will account for somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent of Paisley-based Seric’s turnover this financial year. A third key area of the Seric output is predictive analytics. Tis is another
the watchers’ – being an external watchdog checking that there are no risks or vulnerabilities with the client’s computer systems. He said: “Risks to a company’s IT system
can not only come externally from a hacking atack or a virus or whatever, but also internally. So, quite oſten, we work with clients to protect them from internal risks, basically from the actions of one of their employees.” Seric also does quite a lot of work in the
education sphere and says that the company is well advanced on developing its first soſtware product which will serve this market. He added: “We are very excited about the
product, but not yet ready to announce. However, from our research, we believe it will be very atractive and address a real need of those in the further and higher education space.” Another important facet of Seric’s business
is what it does to support charity, to give something back, given its roots as a PSYBT start up. Macdonald said: “Tere was a campaign in the 1970s which encouraged businesses to give 1 per cent of their profits to charity and we thought we could be a bit more aspirational than that.“ Last year, Seric donated 7 per cent of its
profits to good causes. Employees are also encouraged to donate up to 2 per cent of their company time to working for a charity. Macdonald said: “For some, it is a bit of a
busman’s holiday – they do for charities what they do here. But not always and, to be honest, it is oſten very good for their personal and career development as it has brought ideas back into the business.” Tis noteworthy level of corporate
charitable giving led to Stuart Macdonald being awarded the inaugural Prince’s Youth Business International Global Ambassador award in 2010.
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