We’ve helped Guildhawk Ltd, a women-led, Queen’s Award-winning international business pivot from a language service business to a technology-led, global operation thanks to a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Sheffield Hallam.

Guildhawk has developed long-standing relationships with global organisations including Bloomberg, TikTok, PepsiCo and PWC. They got in touch with us when they decided to create an innovative digital platform to ensure they offered their clients exceptional customer service.

The challenge:

Guildhawk’s existing business management system used home-grown software and the company had no dedicated development team. They needed to radically re-engineer this to not only meet quality assurance standards ISO:9001 and ISO:27001 but also support their growth strategy —creating innovative tech products to sell externally.

Working with our academics from the Department of Computing, Soumya Basu and Chris Roast, we helped Guildhawk become more confident in adopting technology verticals and put Guildhawk in touch with our talented graduates to support the project.

The solution:

The pandemic highlighted demand for new software to improve multilingual data challenges that global companies face. So, the decision was made to capitalise on the unique expertise and invest in the development of new SaaS (a way of delivering applications over the Internet) while still working to meet the KTP’s original aims and objectives.

The additional objectives and demand for new tech opportunities highlighted the need for an internal tech team. We helped Guildhawk create a new research and development team that is now outperforming industry standards set by Microsoft. We’ve also helped Guildhawk pilot the use of new communication tools and flexible working, which has increased productivity by 20%.

The transition from a waterfall to agile project management methodology, whilst simultaneously moving their entire IT infrastructure to a Cloud system has transformed their business model, with over 95% of their business now operating virtually post-pandemic.

The result:

Thanks to the KTP, Guildhawk have launched two new multilingual SaaS products that have helped corporations reduce CO2 through increased digitisation during the pandemic. This has resulted in new revenue streams and opened up new markets, such as South-East Asia.

The KTP also created a cultural transformation and enabled Guildhawk to feel comfortable with technical experimentation. Knowledge of applied project management was embedded through the organisation through team training, which has had a positive impact on productivity and business resilience.

Since the KTP, Guildhawk have noted several benefits:

• An increased breadth of information dissemination
• An increased number of individuals benefiting
• Improved customer and stakeholder satisfaction
• 20% boost in productivity

We’ve formed a long-term partnership with Guildhawk and together we’re committed to training and recruiting new talent. We’ve helped them to access a pool of talented students from our computing department to offer internships, placements, and full-time employment opportunities.