A 48-year old, Mike Pyne has taken on the Fife territory franchise as well as Clackmannanshire (right) and stretches all the way through to Stirling. Pyne comes to the business with 20 years grounding work with Hewlett Packard and its spin-off companies, Agilent Technologies as an application engineer.

When the office he was working at drastically downsized from 2500 to 200 staff, he decided to use his redundancy to take control of his career and set it on a path that better suited his own professional desires.

“robertson technologies gives me the chance to create something over which I have complete control and where there will be a direct correlation between the effort I put in and the results I take out,” (left) Pyne  says. “Working for a large corporation, many decisions get taken out of your hands and it is often difficult to keep control of your own destiny.

"Taking on this franchise gives me a chance to keep in the IT sector I love, build a business and get back to the basics of working directly with customers. If things go well then I would look to expand and potentially take on neighbouring territories, if they were still available.”

Pyne chose robertson technologies because of the support package it offered, especially in areas where he felt less confident, such as sales and marketing. (Though HP engineers' skills worth usually wins out against straight sales enthusiasm!)

The company is also established a solid bedrock in its Edinburgh HQ.  “There is a critical mass of expert staff at Head Office ready to make sure things go smoothly for both myself and my customers,” he added.

robertson technologies aims to award a total of 6 franchises this year and discussions are at an advanced stage for territories based around Glasgow, London and Birmingham.