Ascertus Limited announced today that the company has realised a 30 percent year-on-year growth in revenue in 2021, compared to 2020, which in itself had exceeded the company’s performance for 2019, despite the pandemic. A sizeable proportion of this growth comes from expansion of the iManage Work document and email management system into wide-ranging business departments in corporates, as well as increased adoption of the solution in accountancy firms. Geographically, whilst the UK remains Ascertus’ core market, the company has made great strides in the Nordic countries, The Netherlands, Germany, and even in North America through its membership of The Global Efficiency Group (TGE Group) alliance. Ascertus provides document and information lifecycle management solutions to legal and accounting firms and corporate departments across the UK and Europe.
To support the company’s growth and ensure that client service remained the number one priority, Ascertus grew headcount by the same value of 30 percent, including staff increases across administration, professional services, sales and support. Ascertus will continue to invest in hiring the best talent available through 2022.
“In 2021, many of our sales efforts outside of legal, came to fruition,” says Roy Russell, CEO of Ascertus. In the corporate sector, we already have a well-established presence in legal departments, but with the pandemic and working from home continuing through the year, other business departments realised that their ‘making do’ way of operating was simply untenable for such an extended period of time. With iManage Work already deployed in the legal function, corporates saw that the department made the transition to remote working a lot more easily, so expanding the solution into other business functions became a logical next step.”
In corporate organisations, across industry verticals – most notably insurance, financial services, pharmaceutical, higher education and automotive – Ascertus has implemented iManage Work in departments including tax, HR, facilities, client services and compliance in the UK and throughout Europe.
Russell adds, “In 2021, we gained significant traction for the solution in the accountancy sector too. There was obviously a business need for document management capability and the cloud made it quick and easy for them to deploy the solution, despite all the restrictions the pandemic imposed.”
Ascertus was awarded the iManage Cloud Excellence Partner 2021 accolade, in recognition of the company’s expertise in successfully migrating customers to the iManage Cloud – alongside consistent delivery of a high-quality service that is underpinned by a well-structured, best practice-led Customer Success Programme. 2021 is the fifth consecutive year that Ascertus has won this award, positioning the company as a reliable alternative to other technology suppliers for the iManage portfolio of products.
Corporates and professional services firms alike, across geographies, deployed iManage Work for cross-department and cross-border collaboration capability, security and data protection, and overall operational efficiency. Additionally, given the valuable role Microsoft Teams has played in business operation over the last two years and iManage’s integration with this tool, the platform has become very attractive to all types of organisations. Also, today the IT infrastructure in most organisations is built on the Microsoft stack, so iManage’s long term partnership with Microsoft gives them great confidence for the future.
To demonstrate commitment to cybersecurity, following a rigorous technical audit of systems by the IASME Consortium, Ascertus attained the Cyber Essentials PLUS certification in 2021. This accreditation, in association with the National Cyber Security Centre, is a government backed scheme which focuses on five important technical controls that are designed to guard against the most common internet-based cybersecurity threats.
Through 2021, Ascertus has remained an active member of TGE Group, an alliance of information management technology suppliers based across the globe. Ascertus has played an instrumental role in delivering global projects that are now live in over 50 countries.
Roy Russell concludes, “We are excited about 2022 and are confident that the business momentum that we have steadily been building year-on-year, will continue. The investments we have made in the business over the last two years position us well – not only for continued expansion into international markets and industry verticals, but more importantly, to now gain strongholds in these areas.”