Chess ICT

Chess ICT Ltd is a UK based technology provider, founded in 1993 by David Pollock in Alderley Edge. The business has 6 offices across the UK: Abingdon, Alderley Edge, Borehamwood, Bury St Edmunds, Burnley and Glasgow. It is a private limited company with 500+ people and an annual group turnover of £120 million in 2018, ICT is the largest division in the group.

History

Chess was founded in 1993 and started by selling a water-management device. The business moved into reselling gas and electricity in 1995 followed by telecoms in 1996, with a focus on business to business. Between 2001 and 2018 Chess made 100 capability and customer acquisitions.

Reported acquisitions between 2010 and 2018

In 2010, in a move to strengthen its wholesale business Chess bought the billing platform developer, Shaftesbury Systems.

Its 75th acquisition in 2013 was Microsoft partner and cloud software provider, The CRM Business.

2014 saw a focus on its mobile and partner division with Chess completing the acquisition of O2 and EE mobile distributor Avenir Telecom.

Followed up with a further purchase, that added £2.2m to its turnover through the acquisition of ICT business, Parachute IT.

In 2016 Chess acquired the Burnley-based ICT business Lanway, for an undisclosed sum.

Later that year, AIM listed Pinnacle agreed to sell the trade and assets of Pinnacle CDT to Chess for a total cash sum of £2.8m.

Early in 2017, Chess added Foursys, a cyber security business, for an undisclosed sum.

In 2018 there was a double acquisition adding more than 2,200 customers from Frontier V&D and Stonehouse. It ended the year with the acquisition of voice and data business TMS.

Awards

In 2018, after 9 successive years in the Top 100 Best Mid Companies category, Chess was awarded 1st place in The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For.