Ask the IT Girl - Daily Post, Thursday 3 September

Judith O'Brien, Managing Director of IT Answers talks to Emma Thompson

Judith O'Brien spends most of her working days providing end-to-end IT solutions for a variety of businesses in and around the North West.

The 50 year old from Spital, Wirral, is Managing Director of Liverpool's leading IT support and develoment consultancy, IT Answers, which was established over four years ago.

Now, with a team of 12 employees, the company, based in India Buildings, gives clients daily pro-active IT support and consultancy whilst developing bespoke business applications with their very own Chameleon framework.

Judith's love of IT started after leaving school, when she applied for a post at the Inland Revenue. "I started as a temp when I came out of school as I wanted to go straight into employment", she said. "I loved every minute of it and spent most of the time filling in forms in the microfiche department, dealing with the computer reels and processing films. There was just something about it; it was really different from what everyone else was doing."

After a successful five years, Judith, who is originally from Walton, worked at major international accounting and consulting firm, Deloitte, where she was responsible for daily auditing and computerised systems. She added "I enjoyed my time there immensely but was then head-hunted by Royal Insurance."

Following several other senior posts at a selection of respectable companies, including Royal International and CSC as an Associate Director, Judith decided it was time to use her vast knowledge and experience to set up her own company.

Now IT Answers is working in partnership with brands such as OWL Event Management, Counterline and Abensons Solicitors.

"We continue to go from strength to strength and we have a real ix of different clients. Some use us just for a single service, such as remote backup. However, the majority use all of our services, which I believe shows an esablished relationship and a great deal of trust. Most of our clients have been with us three or four years and we now even have clients in Nigeria and Canada."

Judith and the team are looking towards the future, including developing new applications using their unique Web 2.0 framework, Chameleon.