EPISODE 2
Pre-Covid years: Learning to be an SME and an MSP
The 10 years from 2010 to 2020 were the learning years for Greenlight Computers, growing slowly as a Manchester SME and moving from “break-fix” to MSP (Managed Service Partner).
During this sometimes tortuous decade, the team learned from other MSPs and were continuously courted by vendors promoting their products. We established processes and procedures to help our growing client base adopt cloud computing and stay secure in an increasingly hostile cyber security landscape.
Greenlight made three small acquisitions during this period, with mixed success, often taking on clients who were deeply unhappy. Pleasingly, some of those relationships were turned around, and they remain clients to this day. Others decided that Greenlight was not the solution, and we helped them move on.
Providing IT support is hard enough with clients who want to work with you, and near impossible if they don’t. A key lesson of the period was learning to choose customers carefully. If you don’t share the same vision for the services needed in the future, it’s a tough place to start.
By the arrival of Covid, the Greenlight team had decided to focus on the Life Science & Healthcare sector as its core market, an interesting challenge as the pandemic struck.
Towards the end of the decade, Greenlight also saw the emergence of Bitcoin trading and worked successfully to support two clients in this emerging field. The second transacted with Greenlight in Bitcoin, which our finance system couldn’t handle at the time, so we converted it back into pounds for simplicity. Who knows what we missed out on as Bitcoin surged in the subsequent years!
The people we employed
One of the main lessons John and Gary learned in these middle years was the need for second opinions when interviewing. We employed several people who were simply not the right fit for our dynamic SME world. This delayed the development of the business quite significantly, as we were overly generous in giving people time to adapt and develop.
In any service business, good people are the key. If they are not the right fit, helping them find a new direction can, in some ways, be fulfilling. Many of Greenlight’s former employees have gone on to roles better suited to them and, as Greenlight alumni, are often the first to like and support our social media posts and generally keep in touch.
Our selection of salespeople was a particular disappointment during this period. Selling IT managed services is a consultancy-led process. Customers need to feel confident that the person in front of them understands their business and how best to support it with IT. Many MSPs struggle with this role, as it can take several years to build an understanding of how a business works. This challenge was one of the drivers for focusing the business on a niche, in our case Life Science & Healthcare, a volatile but rewarding arena.
Clearly, the directors’ corporate recruitment methods were not working, so the team adopted a peer-led filtering process for future recruitment, followed by a final interview with a director focusing more on soft skills. This simple change has delivered significant success and substantially reduced staff turnover at Greenlight. Right people, right place.
The £1m barrier
Often talked about as the holy grail for a start-up MSP, the £1m barrier is also the point at which technically led MSPs can start to flounder. For Greenlight, reaching this point was the start of the real business, with both John and Gary growing in confidence as they could delegate to and trust the key staff employed in the business.
As the company grew, John and Gary found things easier, drawing on their corporate management skills. They started to discuss ways to accelerate the business and achieve operational critical mass.
Diversification on demand
With many happy clients using Greenlight IT services and a good team in place, we had started to receive requests for other services. Telecoms was an easy addition, as the move away from analogue and towards digital technologies was well underway. Through an excellent partnership with Marstons Telecom, whose CEO was a former Fujitsu colleague of Greenlight CEO Gary, we added Telecoms to the portfolio.
Similarly, clients appreciated Greenlight’s responsive approach to service but often found the service from their digital marketing partners very poor. Starting with the occasional website hosting project, Greenlight built a new sister business, Greenlight Web.
As you will see, the Greenlight Web team has come a long way since its inception as a WordPress support and hosting service. Its development was driven entirely by clients wanting the same responsive support they received from their IT service.
The diversification into Telecoms and Digital Marketing to provide a single point of service was driven by client demand.
Summary
The decade from 2010 to 2020 was a very frustrating period for two directors who wanted to get bigger quicker. But when we look back, we are proud to have supported some excellent, innovative businesses. We came out of the period with a much stronger team, only to encounter Covid, which left every business, at best, standing still and, sadly, some with no business at all.
The Greenlight team spent a great deal of the Covid period focused on upskilling in our chosen niche of Life Science & Healthcare. More on that in episode 3.
Next episode
In the next episode of this 20-year celebration, we will cover the Post-Covid Years and the development of Greenlight Computers as an MSP, with a “Single Point of Service” approach focused on the Life Science & Healthcare sector.