Welcome to my about Ufindus, Easyspace and Netintelligence.
Hi there, this is the first post of what is going to be a diary of my life as a director of Ufindus.com and also Iomart Group plc.
I decided to start my own blog (the company now has official ones) to try to answer some of the criticism that has been levelled at my company and at the 500 strong team of people that work at Ufindus.
First perhaps it is important to post a bit of background. During the last 10 years I have been involved in the internet and built some of the UK's largest brands which are now household names.
Via many of my businesses my team have managed to raise millions of pounds on the highly regulated UK financial markets and design in excess of 100,000 websites for small and medium businesses. Clearly we have done something right.
Currently I am a director of many internet brands including Ufindus Ltd known as Ufindus.com, Easyspace.com and Netintelligence.com. These companies are grouped under a public company known as Iomart plc, based in Glasgow. The group is projected to have a turnover in excess of £25million this financial year and the largest part of that is currently generated by the Ufindus brand.
A bit about each brand:
Ufindus.com - A website directory that started in response to the dominance of companies like Yell and Thomson Local who pretty much had the UK directory market wrapped up. Ufindus is a web only brand, no useless door stoppers for you to throw away. We currently attract over 6 million searches per month and this number is growing month on month. We have six sales offices.
Easyspace.com - The UK's third largest hosting brand featuring the familiar elephant logo. If you have read an internet magazine you will have seen us. We have three offices in Glasgow and one international office in the far east. One of the sites in Glasgow hosts one of the UK's largest data centre facilities. In aaddition we have other facilities in Edinburgh and London.
Netintelligence.com - One to watch. We have spent years developing one of the most sophisticated internet security brands. Our product suite can monitor huge company networks or protect children from the dangers of the web. The current product suite was launched last year and has hugely growing sales. We have customers around the world and have created partnerships with world respected brands such as BT in the UK.
I decided to post this blog because I have become increasingly frustrated at the number of small one man bands taking a swipe at our success and posting scurrilous comments on the web in an attempt to steal our customers and damage our business. I thought it was time to put our side and for me to speak up for the hundreds of hard working and honest people at Iomart group plc.
In further posts I will try to answer our critics and explain some of the reasons I believe that there are so many postings, in particular about Ufindus.com. When reading these comments please remember that Ufindus.com has the largest sales force in Europe for any internet project and we add huge numbers of new customers every day of the week. Inevitably we will get some things wrong and I am not about to start excusing any poor performance. On the contrary, one of my roles this week has been to establish our accountability department on behalf of the board of Iomart to ensure that we are doing our utmost to make every customer happy. Ufindus.com has over 50,000 paying subscribers so a limited number of complaints on the web is inevitable and if you take any large company you will find criticism levelled at them on a blog site somewhere. Its how they take on board that criticism that is important and at Ufindus.com we intend to learn from our mistakes. That very much includes being open and honest on blog sites such as this. I intend to use my personal blog to put across my point and to use it to learn from our customers.
I decided to start my own blog (the company now has official ones) to try to answer some of the criticism that has been levelled at my company and at the 500 strong team of people that work at Ufindus.
First perhaps it is important to post a bit of background. During the last 10 years I have been involved in the internet and built some of the UK's largest brands which are now household names.
Via many of my businesses my team have managed to raise millions of pounds on the highly regulated UK financial markets and design in excess of 100,000 websites for small and medium businesses. Clearly we have done something right.
Currently I am a director of many internet brands including Ufindus Ltd known as Ufindus.com, Easyspace.com and Netintelligence.com. These companies are grouped under a public company known as Iomart plc, based in Glasgow. The group is projected to have a turnover in excess of £25million this financial year and the largest part of that is currently generated by the Ufindus brand.
A bit about each brand:
Ufindus.com - A website directory that started in response to the dominance of companies like Yell and Thomson Local who pretty much had the UK directory market wrapped up. Ufindus is a web only brand, no useless door stoppers for you to throw away. We currently attract over 6 million searches per month and this number is growing month on month. We have six sales offices.
Easyspace.com - The UK's third largest hosting brand featuring the familiar elephant logo. If you have read an internet magazine you will have seen us. We have three offices in Glasgow and one international office in the far east. One of the sites in Glasgow hosts one of the UK's largest data centre facilities. In aaddition we have other facilities in Edinburgh and London.
Netintelligence.com - One to watch. We have spent years developing one of the most sophisticated internet security brands. Our product suite can monitor huge company networks or protect children from the dangers of the web. The current product suite was launched last year and has hugely growing sales. We have customers around the world and have created partnerships with world respected brands such as BT in the UK.
I decided to post this blog because I have become increasingly frustrated at the number of small one man bands taking a swipe at our success and posting scurrilous comments on the web in an attempt to steal our customers and damage our business. I thought it was time to put our side and for me to speak up for the hundreds of hard working and honest people at Iomart group plc.
In further posts I will try to answer our critics and explain some of the reasons I believe that there are so many postings, in particular about Ufindus.com. When reading these comments please remember that Ufindus.com has the largest sales force in Europe for any internet project and we add huge numbers of new customers every day of the week. Inevitably we will get some things wrong and I am not about to start excusing any poor performance. On the contrary, one of my roles this week has been to establish our accountability department on behalf of the board of Iomart to ensure that we are doing our utmost to make every customer happy. Ufindus.com has over 50,000 paying subscribers so a limited number of complaints on the web is inevitable and if you take any large company you will find criticism levelled at them on a blog site somewhere. Its how they take on board that criticism that is important and at Ufindus.com we intend to learn from our mistakes. That very much includes being open and honest on blog sites such as this. I intend to use my personal blog to put across my point and to use it to learn from our customers.
posted by Stuart Forrest at
21:02
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