[31.08.2007 first posted on silicon republic]
IT consultancy Clarion’s turnover will increase to €7m a year after it acquired a 51pc stake in UK firm The Planning Loft. Pat Millar is its managing director.

Your latest acquisition will see headcount increase to 75 as you take on new markets. Why and how did it come about?
The Planning Loft was our first real acquisition but the UK is too big a market for us not to be in. We’ve been working on the acquisition for over a year now and we’re very excited about it.
How did Clarion Consulting come into being? A number of us worked together previously at KPMG Consulting and we got to a point in our careers where we felt the time was right to do something for ourselves.
We set up in 1998 and started from there, from the beginning targeting blue-chip and other large organisations and then the public sector and financial services industries.
Now that you’ve acquired another firm what are your plans for the year ahead?
We intend to increase staff numbers by taking on 10 more people in Ireland and eight in the UK and we expect revenue to grow to US$7m for this financial year. The big challenge is to get the right people. Our strategy is to always look for experienced people.
You are targeting a space already dominated by Big Four consultancy players. Will this be a bridge too far?
The Irish, UK and Scandinavian markets have an appetite for smaller, focused companies. The Big Four will get the very large system integration deals and look for global rollout of SAP and Oracle systems.
But we are finding a lot of organisations are looking for deep expertise in areas like project management and that’s where smaller companies like Clarion work well.
They prefer us to bigger guys who have a huge breadth of expertise but usually have to fly them in from overseas. They prefer people who are local and can build up knowledge of their business over time.
Is the public sector still skewed in favour of dealing with Big Four players?
I’d say the answer is yes but at the same time it is still possible to win business from the Irish public sector. We’ve done business with organisations like the Health Service Executive and the National Disability Authority.
But the public sector is still risk averse despite controversial projects and overruns. Buying big isn’t necessarily buying safe. Our attitude is to just get on with it and win business where you can and build up credibility over time.
By John Kennedy