PTR 35 Years Working With Data

Happy 35th Birthday PTR!

Here at PTR HQ we recently came together from all four corners of the country to celebrate the company's 35th birthday. It was a joy to hear all the chit chat going on and see smiles on everyone's faces and a real treat to have face to face conversation rather than a Teams call.

Our journey started with data in 1989 and our passion for all things data just grew and grew, you could say data is in our blood!  Which is of course quite literally the case, since we are a family business led by myself and my brother, Ian Roberts, and started by my father, Peter Roberts, with the aim of helping companies transport, access and make sense of the growing amount of data that was emerging. 

Small, agile and responsive, this family ethos still drives the company today and our consultants often tell me that it is this close-knit family atmosphere that makes us unique, both as a place to work and because of the highly personalised service we are able to offer to our customers.

It is staggering how many technology changes and evolutions we have witnessed in our 35 years in business. Business Intelligence tools do far more than the basic reporting and data visualisations they were conceived for - with modern BI platforms like Power BI (introduced in 2013) offering amazing advances in interactive dashboards, real-time analytics, and AI-powered insights.

The massive growth in data (we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of it every day!) has seen a revolution in storage, going from the relatively small relational databases of old to data warehouses and data lakes, allowing companies to analyse vast amounts of it, both structured and unstructured, uncovering a level of insight which was simply not possible before.

And how can we fail to mention the cloud? With no need for on premise infrastructure, companies have been set free with a scalability that makes data analytics accessible to business of all sizes.

In fact I might single out the democratisation of data as the key breakthrough of the past 35 years since data analysis is now widely accessible across all kinds of companies and user types so that non-technical users can help themselves to really key bits of business intelligence, within finance for example. This has widened our audience beyond the original tech wizards to embrace a fascinating range of business users. We’ve enjoyed meeting you all.

Our consultants tell us how much they love turning your questions into tangible projects which give you the answers you need.  For  example, BI consultant Hayley McClaughlin says it is those breakthrough moments when you uncover something nobody has managed to access before which really excite her, while senior BI consultant Brett Valentine-Dunn enjoys guiding customers through their options even when they are not sure what they want. For Steph Butchart it’s the ability to offer an on-going personal service to her clients which she enjoys, ensuring that she will be back from maternity leave as soon as she can!

The desire to make better use of your data is something all of our customers past and present have struggled with at some point in their journey and it’s where we have been adding value for 35 years. 

My husband, Keith Doward, worked alongside me for over 30 years and my brother, Ian Roberts, has been working alongside me leading our technical team for much of that time. I asked Ian what he most enjoyed about our PTR world and here are a few words from him:

'whilst technology has and continues to evolve at a phenomenal rate, we always see our role as ensuring our clients extract the best possible value from their tools and we love the challenge of coming up with creative new ways to use the tools and maximise our customer's return on investment. Never get tired of hearing "Oh wow, I had no idea we could do that!" The way we emphasise building long-term partnerships with our customers and blend consultancy and training, leads to some incredibly rewarding outcomes, when we get to not just solve problems for people, but help them learn how to solve their own challenges. Helping those light bulb moments occur, seeing a puzzle finally unlocked that they've been struggling with for ages, and watching people take the ideas you've helped them nurture and really run with them, gives a great satisfaction."  

We now have a third generation family member in Will Doward-Jones, my son, who joined the team in 2023 and he says, “The fact that we are a family firm makes a real difference to the service we offer. We help customers make quick, sensible decisions, giving them the support they need to be self-sufficient.”

So there you have it! We are a family of enthusiastic and caring team members who all get a thrill from solving problems and seeing the look of pure satisfaction and wonder on faces when a puzzle is solved, a story is told  and a day to day task is made so more efficient and easier. We all, without fail, have a passion for data, a determination to solve our clients' data challenges  and real caring streak to do the best for our clients.

Thank you to all of our PTR family past and present for helping us get to where we are today! 

I am immensely proud of our team and our journey to where we are today.

Best Wishes,

Mandy