Intuitive Systems and Networks (ISN) Director Simon Rance took the only sensible decision when the odds seemed stacked against him.
When Rance decided to set up ISN in 2008 the onset of recession yawned before him. But despite the unfavourable odds and an inner voice urging him to shelve the idea, he remained loyal to his tactically sound business plan and weathered the storm. This year ISN relocated to new offices in Royal Wootton Bassett to house its growing team. The company is on target to achieve £3.2 million and recurring revenues are also on the up, derived from managed help desk and NOC services. ISN has been awarded a Gateway for Growth grant by Wiltshire Council to develop its monitoring platforms and the firm is involved in Network Service Frameworks via Crown Commercial Services.
"Optimising the opportunity is our next challenge," said Rance. "ISN has many public sector clients but having a Government approved route to market is something we can develop and shows how an organisation like us can compete with the usual suspects who are awarded these opportunities. We'll struggle on some and we'll lose a few bids, but we're different and in the current climate many organisations want to work with a company like ISN."
Rance describes ISN as a 'fairly typical SME integrator' but less typical are the large and complex technical solutions it delivers to customers, despite the apparent odds against it in terms of company scale. "We're overturning industry expectations by having a small, flexible and cost-effective team able to hold our own against the bigger IT providers," said Rance. "We're relaxed and we're friendly, we're approachable and cost-effective. We're good at what we do."
ISN's approach to support and service has remained the same since its inception in 2008 when Rance and his colleagues operated out of bedrooms. They were approached by large corporate clients that had got to know them through previous engagements when they worked for a top end IT firm. "As a home run business we were servicing FTSE100 customers, NHS trusts and emergency services clients on critical infrastructure projects," said Rance. "Our background, proven track record and the excellent jobs our technical guys had done in the past had followed us. We saw a method of operating with bigger organisations in a more streamlined, simplified and agile way."
Rance's work experience began when he worked with his father who was Technical Director at a large ISP. This was a formative period and Rance went on to work for a Reading-based ISP where he developed its partner programme. This soon became the most successful part of the business which grew from a home user ISP into a business focused service provider. "After a few years the ISP was acquired and I joined one of my resellers," explained Rance. "I discovered a world beyond reselling circuits, including what goes on the end of them, what they're used for and how important they are. Truly understanding the end-to-end service and working with real-life customers put the whole picture together.
"After a further acquisition went sour I was certain that the smaller, more responsive way of servicing customers was the right way for an integrator to succeed. In 2008 my co-directors and I moved away from our roles in a large corporate IT company and simplified the offering that our clients wanted - we started ISN."
The consultancy firm became an implementation house, which then developed into a managed services company and network operations centre. "By 2012 we were in our own offices and now we've moved to our own building with nearly 25 staff," said Rance. "The growth has been controlled but all successes refer back to the faith our existing clients had in ISN by moving with us in our early days."
ISN also operates on-site for certain customers, filling the role of the network or systems team with the wider ISN team in the NOC available for escalation. It is a model that many other SMEs would struggle with, but ISN's skills and a relatively flat technical structure enables it to successfully deliver these services to customers. "Ideally, we would have an on-site presence at all of our clients," added Rance. "We should be at the heart of everything they do and the key technical decisions that are made."
Rance currently works with a variety of data centre suppliers, break/fix maintainers and various ISPs to pull together a best of breed approach. "Our long-term view is to build our own core data centre and start running our own SLAs while increasing the margin," he said.
Over the last 12 months ISN has been selected for CCS Frameworks. This, along with applying for the necessary ISO compliancy (27001 and 9001), has placed process and best practice further up the agenda. "Throughout these changes we must always be mindful of why people do business with us, and the challenge to keep the same approach as we grow is always top priority," he stated. "ISN needs to stand out. Best practice gets us a long way, but on top of that our future growth will always be based on what is new and exciting in the marketplace and how ISN can make these solutions easy to engage with in a simplified and bespoke offering."
Rance's two fellow Directors, John Broadway and Richard Titheradge, are techies at heart. They know a good product when they see one and they can tell a good service when they find it. "If these are available we'll have no issue at all in working with that vendor or partner to see how it fits into the wider ISN offering," added Rance.
ISN is happy to sit on the fence as both a systems and network provider with its core skills traversing both sides of the divide. From a network point of view the company is primarily Cisco with skills in Checkpoint, Juniper, Extreme and F5. On the systems side ISN is a Microsoft house working on upgrade, virtualisation and help desk projects. The company also runs a successful medical imaging division and has its own voice platform. "The clients we service are diverse and the decision to specialise in a vertical is a challenging one," commented Rance. "Our broad experience of technologies and sectors benefits our customers because we are able to offer a diverse set of options that show what a deployment might look like."
Rance has witnessed many customers move to the cloud, and ISN adds value by helping them to define the nature of their particular cloud. This engagement shows ISN in its best light and depends on its knowledge of a fast evolving market. "Briefing sessions with the likes of Cisco and F5 make you realise how much things are going to change as security, wireless and collaboration move forward, and the day-to-day things we used to worry about become less important as they are centralised," stated Rance. "As long as we keep our finger on the pulse of where the market is heading and have a good network of third parties to support us we're in a good place."
The ISN NOC (monitoring and help desk) and its data centre solutions have been the largest growth piece during the last 12 months and within five years Rance expects ISN to have its own data centre and a support team three times the size. "Our best fit client will be largely the same," noted Rance. "There will be more of them and the ISN name will be better known in the wider marketplace, not just within our own network. Our larger clients all signed up this year for a further three to five years so our current successes will continue to grow. We just need to shout about them more and encourage others to shout for us."
Rance was on garden leave before starting ISN, and the credit crunch hit big time. "I had to sit on my hands for six months," he said. "The temptation to give up on the plan and take a new sales role was huge, but we stuck with it. It was a crazy six months but staying true to our plan in that period was the key to everything we've done so well since."