The first update I’d like to share is that IJYI is performing very well. We have grown significantly over the past 12 months and, in particular, our strategy of pursuing a recurring revenue model has put the business on a very firm footing for the long term.

Our ongoing success in winning highly competitive bids for important projects across private and public sector organisations is a testament to the skills of the team. We’ll be announcing further details shortly, but there are some very innovative customer stories in the pipeline.

The IJYI team is also rapidly growing. Over the last year we have welcomed David Brunning as Head of Technology, Martin Eley Kemp as Support Manager, Gemma Ingham as Project Manager, alongside Kyle White and Teodor Hristoforov as Software Developers.

They will soon (Apr) be joined by further new faces across our development, data and software support teams. We continue to look for talented people across a range of roles and as part of planning for the medium term are looking to re-start our apprenticeship programme later this year.

Looking further ahead, we remain focused on growth. In the current environment, there are major opportunities to work with customers across a range of digital transformation and data-led strategies. We are seeing, for example, business intelligence and visualisation requirements growing at an accelerating pace. Our track record puts us in a strong position to further expand our data, insights and software development client portfolio and we expect to see strong demand going forward.

And finally, taking on a different role in the business was a big decision for our founder, Chris Pont, and he has been hugely supportive during this transitional period. As was his intention, he’s already having an important impact on our technical capabilities – he brings experience, immense talent and drive to the team, and is enjoying the shift of emphasis. Across colleagues and clients alike, we see it as a win-win.