Michael Bird
Digital Marketing Manager
Softcat has ranked 23rd in The Sunday Times’ 11th annual Grant Thornton Top Track ranking of the UK’s mid-market growth private companies with the biggest sales – a jump of 29 places from its ranking in 2014. The league table ranks companies according to their growth, with businesses needing to achieve either sales or profit growth of at least 10% to enter.
Colin Brown, Softcat’s managing director has previously tied the company's growth to its employee engagement, and maintains that this is still the case: “We’re delighted to have climbed Top Track’s ranks this year, and it’s an honour to stand alongside many well known names. It’s mostly down to the hard work of our incredibly motivated staff, whose efforts resulted in strong growth in 2014, so a huge thank you to them. We invest a lot of time and money in our staff, hiring the best people, designing the best training for them and rewarding them financially and with opportunities to progress their careers. We have maintained 98-99% employee satisfaction ratings even as we have doubled in size, which in turn helps us deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction.”
Martin Hellawell, CEO, said: “I’m delighted to see us breaking in to the top 25 of the Top Track 250. Amongst that list of 250 companies I recognise many names of fantastic Softcat customers and I know first-hand how good those companies are, so being mentioned alongside them is a privilege. We’ve grown up with many of those companies and it’s been a very mutually rewarding process to support each other’s growth. However, there are plenty of customers on that list who are not Softcat customers so we still have plenty of work to do. It’s our job to keep raising the bar, continue to get better at everything we do, and fuel our growth well into the future.”
Norman Armstrong, Partner at Grant Thornton UK LLP, the title sponsor of the league table, praised the companies for their performance: "It’s inspiring to see such a diverse range of businesses creating growth opportunities both at home and abroad and positively contributing to the UK economy. Many of the businesses highlighted are recognising that the best way to grow and create sustainable profits is by developing new, innovative ways to serve their customers, alongside making a broader contribution to society.”
The Sunday Times Grant Thornton Top Track 250 is the sister publication of The Sunday Times Top Track 100, which identifies Britain's 100 private companies with the biggest sales. It ranks the next 250-biggest companies by sales, provided either sales or profits have increased by at least 10% year-on-year. The 250 companies grew combined sales by 17% to £69bn, operating profits by 38% to £4bn, and staff by 8% to 347,000.
