But the company is confident about  its  2011 prospects with the sales pickup during the second half providing the new financial year with a strong order book. “Trading in the first quarter of the new financial year has been encouraging and we look forward to 2011 with confidence,” the company said.

Maxima' adjusted pre-tax profit for the year ended March 31 was £4.9m, compared with £7.1m a year ago and revenue was down 10% at £51m but it managed to trim its net debt by nearly £4m year-on-year to £11.8m.

Graham Kingsmill, (right) brought in as CEO in 2009, said: “Our aim to simplify and focus Maxima’s operational processes and value proposition in order to retain existing and attract new customers gathered momentum, particularly in the second half of the year.

“Initiatives to drive economic efficiencies through greater use of our offshore capability and improved internal infrastructure are progressing well, although many of the benefits are still to be realised.”

“There are encouraging signs of recovery in those parts of the business which we have identified as being core competencies for Maxima,” he concluded.

The company claims to have more than 1400 customers across the UK,  Republic of Ireland and USA. It installs and manages IT systems for customers including DVLA, Balfour Beatty, Caledonian MacBrayne and Orange, and conducted a radical shift in strategy and restructuring over the past year, full-scale management & sales reorganisation, a number of redundancies and the sale of non-core activities.