The Barclay Group has announced it will invest £2m in its Northern Ireland landline division, creating 35 new jobs.
The funding will be part of a major growth strategy for the company, including an expanding engineering team which is set to treble over the coming months, and a major office fit out which started in May.
Among the 35 new roles are engineering positions, support staff, direct sales, telesales and business development managers. They will all aim to be filled by the end of this year, while more jobs will be added in coming months, said the Barclay Group.
The £2m investment is one of group's biggest spends to date. In 2020 the organisation surpassed all of its targets, and its upcoming financial results are expected to show a turnover growth in excess of 33% on 2019. This incline means the business now handles over 100,000 business connections (landline and mobile)
In recent months the Belfast-based Barclay Group has also undergone a full rebrand of all its companies, which include Barclay Communications, Barclay Digital Services and WorkPal.
An additional 20-seater call centre will also launch later this year at Barclay’s existing headquarters at Grove House in Donegall Pass in south Belfast.
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Other technological investments in the pipeline will include a £500k cash injection into new landline software specifically designed for businesses that don’t need the complexity or cost of a fully cloud hosted telephone system, but due to the PSTN and ISDN switch off, are now in a position that they must make the change to VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and upgrade to the full fibre broadband network.
Barclay Group said this software will allow them to deliver future-proof business communication at a highly competitive price and coincides with the new call centre.
Meanwhile new human resources software and a new billing system will transform in-house administrative operations.
Last year also saw Barclay Communications successfully tender for a £3m contract with University of Cambridge, which sees it deliver over 5,000 mobile connections that will be accessed by university staff.
Britt Megahey, Founder and Managing Director at The Barclay Group said: “We have been very privileged over the past year to have experienced so much growth during what has been a difficult era for many businesses."
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“While it would be easier to sit back and enjoy that success, we know to be fruitful and sustain such growth we must always put into the business what we get out and that includes investing in our team who are the backbone of the company," he continued.
“It also means securing the best, most convenient and the latest technology so we can offer our clients, who are seeking the most efficient communications systems around, the best on the market.
“We won’t be stopping at £2m. We have big plans to expand our services globally.”
In recent weeks Barclay Communications has rolled out its 'Hang up on Auto-Rolling Contracts' campaign, which is now on its second stage and reaching out to British and international businesses.
Mr Megahey sad that auto-rolling contracts cost NI businesses £4.5m annually through a loophole in regulations which allows comms firms to automatically enrol businesses into a new contract without warning or notice, usually for a minimum of 12 months or longer.
'Hang up on Auto-Rolling Contracts' is one of the initiatives the firm said it is undertaking to combat this.
