Bluesmith

Bluesmith, formally Bluesmith Information Systems, specialises in data warehousing and in designing and building business applications. The firm is employee-owned: at its tenth anniversary a 75% stake moved into an employee ownership trust. It is known for reviving tangled legacy systems as well as building new ones.

What Bluesmith offers

• Data warehousing: agile design and build of data warehouses, with a path towards central data and master data management.
• Business intelligence: reporting that gives quick value without a full redesign of existing systems.
• Transactional systems: bespoke high-volume systems, particularly for retail.
• Application design and build: new business applications delivered with a clear method.
• Legacy support and cloud conversion: supporting, extending and moving older systems to the cloud in mixed technology settings.

Who it serves

Bluesmith has delivered BI work for more than 30 large companies and public bodies, among them Yorkshire Water, Direct Line Group, Moss Bros, Virgin Media, Oliver Wyman, the University of Hull and The Co-operative Group. Its biggest project was a data warehouse for a global airline fed by over 450 sources.

Key facts

• Ownership: 75% held by an employee ownership trust
• Main technology: .NET and SQL Server, plus Teradata, NoSQL, Node and Python