Member Article

Niche systems consultancy forecasts 80% growth

Huddersfield-based All My Systems (AMS) is predicting 80% growth for the next financial year, after a successful 12 months in business.

The brainchild of data expert Mark Pullar, this niche consultancy was established in spring 2014, with the goal of connecting clients’ business systems and driving sustainable growth through intelligent use of processes and customer information. Twenty seven projects have been secured in that time, spanning the team’s web development, customer relationship management (CRM) and data engineering skill-sets. All have arisen from word of mouth or referral recommendations, with clients situated as nearby as Huddersfield and Leeds, but as far afield as Cork, Ireland.

Located in the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre (3M BIC), AMS now has three consultants on board, and is looking for its fourth employee to oversee the company’s own day-to-day operations.

Founder Mark said of this first year: “We left well-paid jobs to make All My Systems work, but that commitment is already paying dividends. We went VAT registered exactly six months after being incorporated and have our sights firmly set on a robust 12 months of performance in 2015-16. This will allow us to invest in additional staffing, skills development, knowledge transfer, and our own sustained growth.”

A strict business focus is required to make best use of the team’s consultancy time. AMS’s target customer base is therefore micro businesses through to organisations with typically 25 staff, with turnover of up to £6.5m and a keen eye on sustainable business growth. That said AMS has also already helped £30m businesses with their strategic development too. Mark explains: “Whether our clients are innovative and have recently expanded; or are drowning in spreadsheets, databases and paperwork and need to work smarter; they share that same desire to drive efficiencies with systems, processes and data.

“Many come to us with a web development project to help better showcase their organisation. But as we very quickly build upon those all-important levels of rapport and trust, they often empower us to transform their entire business systems too. On any one day we can be faced with millions of rows of data, and it’s our job to help clients rationalise and analyse that information, so that it becomes intelligence that wins work and boosts employee productivity.”

Mark has worked on content-driven projects for more than ten years. In the earlier stages of his career, when Content Management Systems were unheard of by many, he was responsible for building a 1,500 page internal website for the University of Huddersfield. Future job roles saw him create a substantial data warehouse that brought ten systems into one bespoke solution, run a £60m payroll and lead a 12 month software procurement programme that came in on time and to budget.

Briony Heyhoe-Pullar, Mark’s wife, is a fellow company director. Responsible for analysing projects – particularly web-based contracts – from the user’s perspective, Briony’s key focus is delivering customer service excellence. She adds: “Our combined skill-set is quite rare, especially in a company of this size, providing this type of service. Our decision makers are able to give development responses immediately, which is crucial for clients in increasingly fast-paced business environments. We manage AMS like we’re a conglomerate but deliver the personal service of small consultancy. It proves you don’t need to be a large outfit with numerous resources to provide powerful data-driven solutions.”

With this mind-set it’s perhaps no surprise that AMS is not aspiring to significantly expand its headcount. Mark concludes: “We get such a buzz from helping our clients grow, so of course we look forward to creating more job opportunities within our own business too. But we want to maintain our focused consultancy model, so will expand in a controlled, incremental manner, rather than pursuing aggressive growth. I think we’ve nailed the ‘small is beautiful’ approach so we’re not ready to change what isn’t broken, just yet.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Katie Mallinson .