In just six years, customer insight company, Clear Cell, has gone from a start-up planned around a kitchen table to a successful £5m company with 65 staff in four countries. They now have plans to expand into new markets, including China, the Middle East and South America.

At an early stage in their business Quickstart Global’s services helped Clear Cell to access a large talent pool of highly skilled statisticians in India. Being able to deliver high quality work to their clients led to Clear Cell’s rapid expansion and in addition gave them the confidence they needed to think globally and grow the business. Co-founder Peter Maloney feels that Quickstart Global’s initial involvement with their business was pivotal to their subsequent success. He comments, “Since then we really haven’t looked back. The belief we gained from setting up the team in India has given us the confidence to operate elsewhere. We’ve become one of a new breed of organisations which seize opportunities worldwide. Geographical boundaries are no longer a concern.”

Initially working from home they realised that to deliver their company vision they needed to hire a number of professional statisticians trained in SAS (statistical software). They quickly identified that there were not enough people with the right skills in the UK to meet their growing needs and they needed to find high quality staff elsewhere for their business to succeed. They worked with Quickstart Global to identify the best place to recruit the talent they needed. The team was quickly set up in Baroda, India, which has a concentration of potential candidates, with high level skills. Peter comments; “I had worked with an offshore team before so I was open to global possibilities - but no other model made it as easy as Quickstart Global. Their expertise and encouragement gave us the confidence we needed to take the plunge.” There are now 25 people in the team in India, and it continues to grow to meet the needs of the expanding business. Peter adds, “We were driven by necessity to set up a team abroad and they have surpassed our expectations. Within six years that team has now become a centre of excellence for the company, delivering to operations in the UK, Europe, US and Canada.”

When faced with a talent shortage in the UK Clear Cell could have chosen to outsource their operations but for Peter this simply wasn’t a model he was prepared to consider. He says, “Outsourcing doesn’t work for me as it essentially means you lose control of one of your functions. In contrast if you establish your own team, either yourself or through a partner, you gain a dedicated loyal team of experts. They just happen to be in India and happen to do analysis. The cost savings can be beneficial but this factor alone is not a sustainable reason to have a team based abroad.”

www.clearcellgroup.com