Prosperity 24.7 – the fastest growing Business and Technology consulting business in the Channel Islands – re-enforced its commitment to support enterprise and innovation within the Channel Islands’ business community this week when CEO Chris Clark shared his Global aspirations and local experiences whilst speaking at two events in Jersey as part of Jersey Business’ Enterprise Week.
The first and most well attended event was organised by Close Finance and Moore Stephens. Over a hundred people listened to the panel’s experiences of starting up a business, the challenges and the benefits. This excellently organised breakfast event at the Radisson Blu had a raft of local experience on the panel such as Kristina Le Feuvre from The Amazin’ Adventure Park, Shaun Ranking from Ormer, Andy Cook from Jersey Business, John Garton from Genuine Jersey as well as Prosperity 24.7’s CEO, Chris Clark.
All, including Chris, spoke candidly regarding their experiences, elaborating about the support that is available today from various States of Jersey Departments to encourage entrepreneurial endeavours.
The second event was in conjunction with JT at the Royal Yacht. This evening seminar had key speakers from the Island’s technology industry, Andy Jarrett, Director of Digital Jersey, Tim Bullock, CIO of BNP and Chris Clark, CEO of Prosperity 24.7.
They addressed the topic “Technology as a driver for International Growth”, the seminar was designed to provide business leaders, entrepreneurs and IT professionals with an insight into how technology is enabling businesses to remain competitive and how it can be harnessed to drive growth beyond the shores of the Channel Islands.
Opening the session, Andy Jarrett from Digital Jersey, who acted as moderator, set the scene elaborating upon the Global competitive landscape, how innovation in the Digital Sector will see a direct and positive impact upon Jersey’s community, Industry and its people. However he warned “local Organisations need to review their products and services to ensure that they can export and prosper Internationally. Leverage our accessibility to Government and skills, otherwise you risk being out-competed by Global names. You really need to be aware of what is happening outside of the Island”.
Tim Bullock was the next to elaborate upon his experiences, he shared how “BNP had moved their traditional infrastructure to a flexible, agile ‘Private Cloud’ enabling them to provision services ‘on demand’ as the business needed them, removing the constraints that traditional IT has over a business’s desire to adapt and compete”. He continued “BNP’s IT team have created a platform for product innovation and growth to underpin the aspirations of the wider Organisation, that is why any IT team should exist, to add value and to deliver opportunity”.
The final person to share his experience was Chris Clark, he talked passionately regarding his own experiences of developing Prosperity 24.7 into a company with Global aspirations, supporting companies in 11 Jurisdictions around the World as well as over a hundred locally already. He elaborated upon the obvious benefits of ‘going Global’, citing a scenario where Prosperity 24.7 are looking to help a European client that needs assistance with a project that could in turn help 45,000 staff, “Projects of this scale are essential if Jersey is going to continue to prosper and grow a Digital Community”. He went on “when you consider ‘Moore’s law’ – we are developing solutions year on year that have twice the functionality yet at half the cost, why is the rest of the Island not waking up and realising that this is the impact of technology and competition? If the other Industries no not react now, I genuinely fear we are burying our heads in the sand.” He continued “It is frightening to see Industry return to its preferred, safe model, namely as the market improves it resorts to throwing more bodies at a task, this is madness! It will only lead to greater challenges further down the line, businesses should be looking to automate and operate with fewer, not greater numbers of people in these times to be able to compete in the future”.
In closing Chris added “If there is one key message that needs the support of the wider community it is to ensure that everyone in the World knows that Jersey is here, it is open for business and it wants your business, now”.
The Jersey Business’ Enterprise Week culminates in the 2014 Awards for Enterprise gala evening on Friday 13th June for which both Chris Clark and Prosperity 24.7 are shortlisted for awards – Entrepreneur of the Year and New Enterprise of the Year Award respectively, lets keep our fingers crossed that we are as lucky as we were at the recent IoD Awards where Chris walked away holding the Award for Director of a Medium Sized Enterprise.
