IT firm finds resilience through COVID-19

“The adoption of remote technology in business has probably advanced two to three years in the last three months.”

IT support firm Team Metalogic has been providing expertise and support for small businesses since 2003.

The business, founded and led by Mike Parfitt, really moved into an expansive phase as the credit crunch hit, when the financial crash led firms to examine how they could make efficiency savings. Since then the company has enjoyed further growth, expanding its workforce and winning new clients.

The company has been helped by the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme (AGP), which provides targeted support for ambitious growing firms. The programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government.

We spoke to Mike earlier this year when he told us about his business journey here.

Like many businesses, the challenges Mike and his team have faced in 2020 have been challenges like no other. Here Mike tells us how Team Metalogic has met those obstacles head on, and how the company has responded to the pandemic.

How did COVID affect your business?
I never thought I’d be leading a business through a crisis like this one. The financial crash in 2008 was massive. In many very obvious ways, this crisis has been very different.

We’ve been really busy during the lockdown, with many clients realising that their teams need to be able to work remotely and efficiently. This in itself has created a challenge. It meant that the managed services aspect of the business has been incredibly overworked, meaning we could not furlough any staff, despite other areas of the business suffering a hit.

We also struggled with our supply chain, because of a huge demand for hardware across the world. This drove up prices and increased

delivery times. Many of our customers were now needing their teams to be able to work remotely, but others still relied on systems at their physical locations. To bring these systems online so that they can be accessed remotely, we needed to access these locations. With lockdown in place, this was very difficult.

We had also taken on two new highly-skilled project engineers just before lockdown. Although the projects they were brought in to manage were put on hold, we didn’t want to lose them, as highly skilled staff are tough to find. We had to use them elsewhere in the business even though this was not utilising their skills.

Despite being busy with the managed services aspect of our business, this was part of our retained offering, so it didn’t reflect an increase in income. We lost quite a bit of revenue during the three-month period lockdown was in place.

What did you put in place to overcome those challenges?
We introduced a number of measures to see us through. We:

● Temporarily reduced fees to support our clients where possible.

● Extended payment terms to clients where possible, to allow them time to manage cash flow and access grants or financial support.

● Communicated with clients and educated them about the supply chain, to ensure understanding of time frames and costs.

● We took the decision that we would act boldly and decisively, as in times of crisis we were either going to make it through or we weren’t so we would have to act quickly. This worked as we were ahead of the game and were able to support our clients more effectively.

● Accessed a Development Bank of Wales COVID support loan.

How have you come through the challenges facing your business?

Thanks to the plans we put in place, and the hard work of our fantastic team, our pipeline has tripled since the lockdown, and we continue to see high demand. The customers we supported throughout have remained with us and we are starting to get more new enquiries.

Like many other businesses we are having to manage our resources carefully to meet this increased demand while we recover and further prepare for the future.

What advice would you have for those who may face similar challenges as the uncertainty continues?
First and foremost, keep planning. We created a 90-day plan to deal with COVID, we educated our clients on what they’d need to cope with the changing circumstances, how long this would take and how to best manage the costs of these changes.

It can sound a bit clichéd, but organisations need to plan for the unplannable. Pre-COVID, not many business contingency plans would have included the wide-reaching implications of a global pandemic, or the fallout from it. Now, businesses need to have a plan in place for an event that could cause similar disruption, so that they can be agile and make the necessary changes, quickly and remotely.

It’s interesting what pressure can do to an entire industry, let alone an individual organisation. The adoption of remote technology in business has probably advanced two to three years in the last three months.

The uptake and quality of tools such as Microsoft Teams has progressed enormously and having a meeting remotely is now the standard. That’s something I think will remain even after these restrictions – it doesn’t really make sense to travel half the country for one meeting or to work for a day. With the right IT support and advice, any business can prepare for totally new ways of working, and that’s where we come in.

To find out more about Team Metalogic visit its website here.

Further information on the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme

Care provider seeks to provide quality offering for Wrexham residents

“The support from Business Wales AGP has been really beneficial to us in a challenging year.”

Quality care in later life is something which matters to everyone and for Orchard Care, which has two homes in the Wrexham area, providing a high standard of care for its residents is central to its ethos.

When Dave and Gemma Atkins started out in the sector in 2009, they immediately saw the need for quality care provision in the Wrexham area, and sought to give residents at their homes the best possible quality of life.

Of course, it’s been a very difficult year for the care sector. Here, Dave explains not only the business’ story, but also tells us how Orchard Care responded quickly to ensure the safety of its staff and residents was at the very core of its operation.

Tell us about Orchard Care
We’re in the business of caring. That means a commitment to the people who are residents in our homes, as well as a commitment to the people who work for us.
We’ve been doing this now for more than a decade, and when we started out, we wanted to be a care provider which put quality at the very heart of our offering.

Our story begins in 2009, when we purchased Cherry Tree Care Home. It was a 17-bed home but we had plans to improve it. In two years we extended it to 37 beds and we further expanded the business in 2017 when we bought Bay Tree House.

We’ve always wanted to create care homes with a family feel and where people feel valued, supported and heard. Bay Tree House is in a quiet residential area of Wrexham, and with a lot of hard work we have turned it into an exclusive boutique hotel-style nursing home.

The refurbishment involved a complete luxury upgrade and cost £1m. In the process we increased our capacity from 36 to 46 beds. We now have a total of 76 staff employed in the group.

It’s been hard work but seeing the end result has given Gemma and I huge satisfaction.

 What are your proudest moments in business so far?
Without a doubt it was when we completed the luxury upgrade and refurbishment of Bay Tree House, our second residential home. Opening that property was such a proud moment for us.

We raised finance from Santander along with family for the acquisition of our first home, Cherry Tree.

We then moved to Barclays for the purchase of Bay Tree and sourced additional funding from the Development Bank of Wales to complete the refurbishment.

It hasn’t been easy to raise the money we needed to get to where we are and has taken a bit longer than we expected. But working to make our vision come true is what keeps us going.

What challenges have you faced in business?
COVID-19 has posed a whole host of new challenges for us as care providers.

We’ve seen our occupancy levels drop, at the same time as costs have increased.

There’s more workload for the business now thanks to the extra paperwork, policies and procedures we are working with. And there continues to be constant changes and developments in these policies.

It’s a story of keeping ourselves up to date and abreast of everything we need to know.

We put ourselves in a full lockdown in March, and staff lived-in for six weeks. Since then all staff wear PPE and follow the company’s own procedures – it’s a methodology which we believe in and has kept staff and residents safe.

If you were starting again, what would you do differently?
That’s a difficult one to answer. I think we’re always assessing the decisions we’ve made in the past and how those decisions impact on the business right now.

Pinpointing exact moments which we’d like to change is hard. I think our journey from initially owning one home to two has been a growth both in business terms but also for us, wanting to give as many people as possible the best possible care in later life.

How has support from Business Wales AGP helped your business?
Expert support from Business Wales AGP was really beneficial to us when we needed to market the homes and increase occupancy rates.

Working with Business Wales AGP has also led us to commission further work, such as professional pictures, a video and an upgrade to our website. This has been invaluable to our growth.

What advice and guidance would you give other businesses starting out?

• Never give up and keep going. I’ve faced many hurdles in business and part of what keeps me going is the drive and determination to succeed and not fall at each hurdle. I believe the reward is greater if the work is harder.

• Seek advice and support. There’s plenty out there, and Business Wales AGP is a massively helpful resource if you’re starting out in business.

• Don’t be afraid of making tough decisions. We’ve had to do that along the way and 2020 has been incredibly difficult in so many ways. But we’re here to do the best for our residents and I think holding on to a key value is really important to help you make difficult decisions.

To learn more about Orchard Care visit here.

Further information on the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme

How one simple idea is turning into a fast-developing fintech disrupter – which is already proving resilient and ready for a changing future

“It would have been difficult to secure some of our big wins without the support of Business Wales AGP.”

For Swansea-based fintech firm QuoteOnSite, solving other business’ problems is at the heart of their proposition.

Established by Nigerian-born TJ Amas, QuoteOnSite provides a unique suite of cloud-based quotation management software. It allows business owner-managers to develop and pitch professional quotations to grow their businesses. For SMEs and larger businesses, the software facilitates the management of teams involved in the quoting process.

Still in its early stage of growth, the business has won a range of clients and has plans to build on this success by expanding and taking on new staff.

The company has been helped in no small part by the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme (AGP), which provides targeted support for ambitious growing firms. The programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government.

Here, TJ Amas tells the story of QuoteOnSite, provides insight into what the company has done to overcome adversity and offers advice for other entrepreneurs.

Tell us about QuoteOnSite
Well, we’re a young business, but we’ve already achieved plenty – and we have ambitions to achieve much more.

A bit about me first – my family moved to Swansea from Nigeria when I was 17 so I could study for my A-levels here. It proved to be crucial because it is the starting point, and home, for my business. I couldn’t wait to get to work when I finished school, so I learned programming and software architecture on the job with a long-established firm here in Swansea.

From there I moved into consulting and started developing a simple job quoting app for self-employed people.

My wife, Elaine, and I decided this simple idea could be turned into a great business. But we realised we needed expert help, and investment to get us off the ground. We overcame those early hurdles and although we’re still in the early stages of growth, we have a four-strong team, have raised investment from the Development Bank of Wales and an angel investor and have won contracts with companies all over the world, some of them employing over 400 people.  

What started life as a simple tool has now been developed to provide an array of quoting management tools – from proposal generation to digital contract-signing. I’m no longer doing consulting work and Elaine and I are now putting all our energy into the business. There are some exciting times ahead for us and we’re now completely focused on turning our early success into something even bigger.

What are your proudest moments in business so far?
We’ve had plenty of wins so far, despite it being relatively early days for us. But we’re really proud of winning big clients, which proved to us that our technology works for a range of customers.

It’s not just client wins which have given us confidence in what we’re doing. When we closed the deal on £350,000 worth of investment, it meant not only securing the finance we needed to power the next stage of growth, it also meant that others believed in our vision. That felt like a real vote of confidence in our proposition.

Finally, our nomination as one of the top 50 Fintech disrupters in the UK in 2020 by Business Cloud was yet more confirmation that we’re making waves in our field and getting noticed.

What challenges have you faced in business?
Our business was gaining traction and we’d just taken on two sales staff a month before the COVID-19 lockdown was announced.

We really felt the economic crisis initially, with our sales affected as people considering using our products suddenly saw their own orders and work dry up. 

QuoteOnSite is a service which is used at the early stages of the sales cycle, so this knock-on impact was inevitable. We decided to use the time to take stock and move forward.

Our base at Techhub Swansea closed for the duration of the lockdown, so having taken stock of our options, all staff started working from home. We also had no choice but to furlough everyone except the software developers.

We tried not to look at things as a crisis for our business though, instead we used it as an opportunity. It meant we had time to put more energy into the development of the product. Staff have now been brought back in and we’re pushing forward with selling. Costs remain a big consideration for us, so we’ve decided to adopt a working from home model for the rest of this year.

We’ve managed to get through this year without external funding, including a resilience grant, because we didn’t fit the criteria. Overcoming obstacles and viewing challenges not as a negative but a positive is something which is very much a core value for me personally, and in our business. I think if we’d approached 2020 in any other way then things would look very different for us right now.

On a more personal level, I don’t believe my Nigerian heritage has been a barrier to me in business. However, there are plenty of times when I do feel the exception in the room, and I wonder why I see so few black and brown faces in business in Wales. It’s something we as a nation need to address.

If you were starting again, what would you do differently?
We’d definitely spend less money on Google Ads in the early days and more time researching – speaking and listening to clients – to understand their markets better. Looking back, I think we’d have taken more time considering what staff we really needed, understanding how jobs had to be to be delivered, so we could manage those staff more effectively.

 How has support from Business Wales AGP helped your business?
We’ve been given some incredibly useful support and resources from Business Wales AGP, and it would have been much more difficult to secure some of those big wins I have mentioned without the programme.

Business Wales AGP helped us raise investment, which has been critical to our growth and our ability to develop and deliver our product.

We’ve also been given support to develop our brand identity for QuoteOnSite.

Linked to this is the positioning of our product and business. Working with Business Wales AGP, we’ve been able to shape our voice, and how and what we say to our customers. I don’t think you can underestimate the value of these things for a business like ours. We’re building a brand which means that personality, voice and positioning are integral to our growth and development.

And of course, being a digital company, the work which Business Wales AGP has done with us on our website and our digital presence has been immensely helpful.

What advice and guidance would you give other businesses starting out?

• Go out and talk to your potential customer to find out what they really want and get to know the market.

• Focus on a few sectors first, even if you could be in all sectors.

• Conserve cash by not taking on too many people too quickly.

• Take advice. Don’t be afraid to listen to others.

• Be part of something like Business Wales AGP as you know you have someone there to support you and listen to you.

To learn more about QuoteOnSite visit here.

Further information on the Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme