Kyloe

Working with Bullhorn clients worldwide

Established in autumn 2015, Kyloe builds software products for SME recruitment businesses to help maximise the return on investment on their Bullhorn CRM platform. The Kyloe team provides a variety of high-value consulting services, including custom workflows and reports, system configuration, data manipulation and custom integrations for over 250 clients worldwide.

Set up in October 2015 by Raymond Pennie and Stewart Morgan, Kyloe employs some 60 people worldwide. The team services the needs of 800 Bullhorn clients worldwide, split evenly between UK, Europe, America and other locations such as, Hong Kong and Australia.

With their head office in Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, Kyloe has worked closely with HIE. Support has included investments in capital projects, including £191,000 in 2018 to help the business move to larger premises, leadership training, graduate recruitment and marketing which have been instrumental to the growth of the business.

Fiona Morgan, Company Secretary and HR Director, explains: “Our HIE account manager has been very helpful. She tells us about different grants and opportunities that may be useful to our business and she puts good ideas
forward for us to consider. We’ve been very lucky to be able to work so closely with HIE and have benefited from all the help they’ve been able to offer us.”

Simone Pennie, Finance Director added: “When we set up our US subsidiary, HIE put us in touch with Scottish Development International in Boston, which is a worldwide network of business contacts designed to help Scottish companies expand internationally. SDI introduced us to Citizen Bank and identified the other service providers to help us with commercial contracts, payroll and tax. We also had our first board meeting in their Boston office. Their introductions were completely invaluable to us – and gave us immediate credibility.”

Developing skills for the future

Kyloe is committed to providing opportunities for people interested in careers in software development. See our short film about the business and its Orkney home.

It has recently announced it has doubled its workforce in Orkney, and despite the impact of the pandemic on global markets,  has employed ten new people in the first six months of 2021 across the wider business.

Stewart Morgan, Co-founder, explains: “We are always on the lookout for good people with software development, database skills, project management or customer service skills. Our people are very important to us and we now have an experienced workforce in the UK and US that we continue to expand.

“We’ve built up a really excellent team of technical graduates here in Orkney. In the early days of the business, we identified a specific project we wanted to deliver and HIE told us about ScotGrad. They, along with Business Gateway, helped us recruit motivated people to the company.

The first graduates to join Kyloe were people who were already living here in Orkney. They were delighted to get a job at home that actually used their skills. Since then we have developed links with the local college and local school – and we’ve had school leavers doing placements with us over the summer months before they go away to university, and then again after their first year of studies. This is just one way that we are keen to identify future talent.”

“We actively encourage talented people, such as software developers or data engineers, who are based and working elsewhere to move here to Orkney. And that’s where the support of HIE, SDI and GlobalScot is helping to raise our business profile. As we grow, and our reputation grows, then the more people hear about us and that definitely helps," said Raymond Pennie, Co-founder.