NI firm invests £600,000 to create 13 new jobs

One of Northern Ireland’s fastest growing technology businesses is expanding its workforce by 75% this year, as it expects a further uplift in new customer acquisition.

Antrim-headquartered Decision Time, which counts leading public and private sector organisations across the UK and Ireland as customers, is creating 13 new jobs in software development, sales, customer service, HR and marketing. The new jobs are being created as part of an investment of almost £600,000 in the business.

Invest NI has supported the creation of 10 of the roles with an offer of support of £75,000. This will help increase the company’s headcount from 17 at the beginning of this year to 30 by the end of 2021, with further recruitment expected in 2022.

Founded by entrepreneurs Geoff and Sinead Higgins, Decision Time provides software that makes it easier for organisations to practice good governance by running effective meetings, managing risk and monitoring their strategic performance. It enables CEOs, directors and leaders across any organisation to manage all of these essential requirements in one place.

Decision Time’s customers include NHS Trusts, large universities, over 60 housing associations in England, Scotland and Wales, 40 percent of the Republic of Ireland’s public sector bodies, and major Northern Ireland organisations such as Tourism NI and Translink.

In the last two years, Decision Time has more than doubled its customer-base, including continuing to win business from large global competitors. Indeed, such has been its growth, that it was listed in the Deloitte Fast 50 Ireland 2020 for the third year in a row. It also recently announced Patrick McAliskey as its new chairman.

This year, Decision Time is projecting record business growth across all of its markets as organisations increasingly prioritise good corporate governance and risk management, and seek a solution that helps them manage these and their strategic performance all in one place.

Geoff Higgins, CEO of Decision Time said: “Corporate governance has moved right up the agenda for large organisations in recent years, and as boards and senior leadership teams have shifted to meeting remotely, an easy-to-use cloud hosted solution has been a priority for them. We have been able to sustain good growth over a number of years and this year we are expecting this to be even stronger, based on our current market penetration and pipeline of enquiries.”

Sinead Higgins, Business Director of Decision Time continued: “We are delighted to be in a position where we can create new jobs to support the growth that we experienced in 2020, and to enable us to expand further this year.

“Decision Time puts a huge emphasis on attracting and retaining the best people so that we can deliver exceptional products and customer service to our customers.

“We are therefore offering a really fantastic package to team members including a generous profit share scheme for all staff, significantly increased annual leave, a healthcare plan and industry leading flexible working practices.”

Talking about Invest NI’s support for the company, John Hood, Invest NI’s Director of Multi-Sector added: “Decision Time has built an excellent reputation with its first in class software and has an impressive customer portfolio across the UK and RoI with over 250 customers using its software at present.

“The company has reached a pivotal point in its planning for future growth and has decided to follow a more ambitious path with the creation of 13 jobs at its Antrim base. These are well-paid jobs, which will ultimately help the company build its customer base and expand its sales outside of Northern Ireland and RoI.”

A small number of the 13 jobs have been filled and recruitment for the others is ongoing. Three of the new team members - Susan Hill, Head of People Management, Tracey Braziel, Head of Marketing & Communications and Mary O’Kane, Sales Executive started with the company on International Women’s Day in March. During April a fourth member, Paul McSorley, Inside Sales Representative, joined the team.

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