A Manchester-based web platform is looking to improve the efficiency of the UK security industry after launching in the last fortnight.
Broadstone Engage connects companies and individuals across the UK’s private security industry, allowing firms to subcontract with one another through an online platform as well as recruiting staff more efficiently and effectively.
Security workers can create a free profile for security companies to view, with both the businesses and individual clients building up their respective profiles over time.
Founder Thomas Pickersgill said the firm already had a number of paying partners on its platform from the industry and is anticipating a full launch at the end of January.
“We’ve built up a small network to test out the product. They are paying customers who are building up usage so they will gain a preferable ranking when other customers come on board following our hard launch,” he told BusinessCloud.
“The industry is worth a reported £4.4bn pa and yet in many areas still operates in an old fashioned manner. Broadstone’s platform will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of business process specifically across recruitment and subcontracting.”
Pickersgill is a former professional footballer who played for Morecambe in his early twenties before heading to Indiana University in the United States to read business management on a full scholarship.
He then returned to his home city of Manchester to work as a business development manager, providing a range of financial services into the private security industry, where the idea for Broadstone was born as “it was evidently clear that the industry needed to embrace technology”.
Founded in October 2016 with a seed loan from the Business Growth Fund, the Broadstone platform was built by friends of Pickersgill from Indiana University who are now developers at Apple HQ in Cupertino.
Broadstone is aiming to bring the vast majority of its 808 target market businesses on board by 2020, with the monthly membership charge currently standing at £295+VAT per month regardless of the size of the firm.
“I am keen to bootstrap the start-up for as long as possible but the business and cash plans recognise the need for staff – and a round of funding in the next six months is inevitable,” added Pickersgill.
“I am also keen to become more involved in Manchester’s tech scene: it is such an exciting place to be starting a technology business.”