Northgate wins lucrative public sector contract

Hosting Hillingdon's financial systems

Northgate Information Solutions has won a £4m contract with the London Borough of Hillingdon to provide hosting arrangements for its financial systems.

The company, which supplies software and outsourcing services to the public sector, human resources and corporate markets, has an Irish subsidiary, Northgate HR, which was previously the Cara Payroll Group.

Northgate HR has offices in Dublin, Belfast and Cork and claims to be Ireland's largest provider of HR and payroll solutions. It processes an estimated €5bn in salaries for its clients each year.

Under the terms of the new five-year contract Northgate will provide a central management, hosting and support service for six key business applications. It will also take ownership of, upgrade and maintain Hillingdon council's technology assets for these applications.

Northgate already provides the council with its revenues, benefits and housing applications, and will now take over the hosting and support for these applications, together with the hosting of the council's finance, social care and planning systems.

Headquartered in Hemel Hempstead, Northgate employs more than 3,200 staff and has approximately 2,700 corporate customers and around 7,000 small to medium enterprise (SME) customers across the UK and Ireland. As well as working with companies, Northgate works with over 90 per cent of the UK's local authorities, and all of its police forces.

The firm acquired the Irish-based employment software firm Engage Technologies in November 2006 for an undisclosed sum and recently told the London Stock Exchange it was earmarking £13m to embark upon a number of small "in fill" acquisitions.

In early December, the company announced that its first half profit rose 38 per cent. The company's profit stood at £13.9m in the six months ended October 2006 versus £10m in the year-ago period. During the same period, first half revenue rose 1.5 per cent to £165.1m, up from £162.6m.

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