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Big Red Cloud has won the public vote to become the Sponsor for a Day for Leinster Rugby. The competition, the brainchild of the Bank of Ireland Business marketing team, will see Big Red Cloud’s company name emblazoned across the Leinster Rugby jersey for a European Champions Cup game against French team Castres on January 16th.

To say that we are delighted is an understatement. This is a very proud moment in the history of the company and though our CEO’s connection to Leinster Rugby was well documented throughout our campaign, it is worth repeating.

Marc O’Dwyer played for Leinster at both U16 and U20s and his dad  Jerry also played for Leinster, winning his first cap against Munster in 1954. Here we are, 60 years on and Marc’s dream to wear the Leinster jersey again is realised in front of a guaranteed full house at the RDS Arena.

A big thank you to everyone that voted for us. Our business is built on the support of thousands of small businesses across the four provinces and we could not have achieved this without your fantastic and loyal support.

Thanks also to our accountant and bookkeeping communities. We’ve worked hard to build communities of users around the Big Red Cloud platform and we look forward to continuing that work.

Not forgetting our own solid team here at Big Red Cloud. A team effort and each and everyone’s contribution all added up in the end to a remarkable victory.

We also want to acknowledge our fellow contestants. Jobbio, Nobo, Radical Oats and Atlantis Seafoods – thank you for such a close run campaign. Three weeks is long, long time and every day we had to keep our foot on the pedal. We had no choice such was the online and offline activities that we all were engaged in.

Whilst the voting has ended the next phase of the Sponsor for a Day campaign begins – our planning for the big day itself. Stay tuned as we have one absolutely massive prize to give away to one of our Leinster based customers.

Check out the moment we found out we were the Sponsor for a Day for Leinster Rugby for 2014/15. We think it’s a great video and hope you like it too.

 

 

Marc O'Dwyer

After completing a Graduate program in Marketing, Marc’s impressive sales career began at Allied Irish Banks, Pitney Bowes and Panasonic where he received numerous Irish and European sales performance awards and consistently exceeded targets and expectations. In 1992, Marc’s entrepreneurial spirit led him to set up his own business, Irish International Sales (IIS). Initially, this company was a reseller for Take 5 Accounts and Payroll software. Within four years, IIS became the largest reseller of Take 5 in Ireland, acquiring four other Take 5 resellers. He also found time to set up two mobile phone shops under the Cellular World brand and a web design company offering website design services for small businesses. In 2001, he bought the majority share in a small Irish software business, Big Red Book. At that time, the company was losing money. The company became profitable within two months, and Marc then acquired a payroll company to compliment Big Red Books Accounting products. In 2003, IIS were appointed as Channel Partners with SAP for their new SME product, SAP Business One. Marc sold his Take 5 business and concentrated on developing this new market for SAP As a result, by 2007, IIS was recognised as the largest Channel Partner for SAP in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa). In 2008, the IIS Sales Manager bought the Company from Marc in an MBO. He launched Big red cloud in June 2012, the online version of big red book, to date the company successfully converts 59% of trials into sales and the number of customers is growing rapidly. Marc continues to run both Big Red Book and Big Red Cloud which now support 75,000 businesses. He is a very keen sportsman, having played rugby for 20 years, represented Leinster at under 16 and under 20 levels, and league squash with Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club for 10 years. Marc has competed in 11 Marathons, including the London and Boston Marathons, and has completed several Triathlons and Half Ironman races. He has also completed six Ironman Races in Austria(x2), Frankfurt (Germany), Nice (France) , Mallorca (Spain) and Copenhagen (Denmark)