Wiltshire IT services and solutions company Mintivo has made five key additions to its staff to keep pace with demand while remaining on course to beat its growth target.
The five year old Lacock company, which offers managed IT support, consultancy, cyber security and business intelligence, set a growth target of 30 per cent this year but is on course to add another ten per cent on top of that, said Commercial Director Alex Jukes and recently appointed Service Director Jason Lovell.
Experienced Technical Consultants Tony Hillier-Swift, Francois Schutte and Dan Knott have been recruited into the business to provide expertise and vision for Mintivo customers which include Castore, Good Energy, Investors in People, Dorothy House Hospice Care Business Cyber Centre and the Ministry of Defence.
“These are heavyweight appointments for us and the majority of the work that they’ll be doing with our customers, especially newer customers, is to understand where they are currently, why they are there and what they’re trying to achieve,” said Mr Lovell.
“They might be looking to scale up, work in more efficient ways or get into a good place so they could be an acquisition further down the line.”
He said the consultants become so integrated with the businesses they support they almost are viewed as part of the business. “They sit as part of a client’s executive team and when they’re having conversations about what they’re trying to achieve as a business, they’re using their years of experience from an IT standpoint to advise on the impact of any changes and where their next investment may need to be to maximise value and ultimately return on investment.”
Their insight is also valuable to companies looking to acquire or merge with others. “They are supporting them in their technical due diligence and, if the IT infrastructure isn’t fit for purpose, whether money needs to be invested,” said Mr Jukes. “That needs to be considered when that company is making an offer or if they’re looking to consolidate it into their own organisation.
“Our consultants can foresee what complications and challenges they are going to have in integrating two platforms and the cost associated with that, so they can make sure that their bid is appropriate to the amount of work they’re going to have to do.”
Mintivo has also recruited Infrastructure Engineers Ross Kerry and Alex Mann to bolster its maintenance support. Mr Lovell said they will help Mintivo keep customers’ IT infrastructure operating at its optimum. “The two guys have come in with extensive Microsoft background and we’re already starting to see the benefits,” he said.
“Rather than just responding to things that are broken and fixing them, they’ve given us greater capacity so that we can continue to prevent things from happening by being aware of potential issues, before they happen.”
Mr Jukes said the company’s growth stems from bringing in larger customers with more complex systems to manage. “Although smaller organisations continue to invest and realise greater value in their IT, the type of organisations has matured quite substantially, over the last 18 months,” he said.
“We’ve been helping a lot of our smaller customers move to Cloud-first operations, which has been the right thing for them but with a mid-range enterprise that is a little bit older there is a lot more complexity in the systems they use, typically due legacy application and services.
“People are embracing the cloud but some customers are unable to fully migrate and need to retain some infrastructure on their premises, meaning we are seeing more appetite for hybrid solutions. This inevitably comes with a need for extra management and maintenance and now we’ve got the extra people in we’re able to build in that extra capability to stay ahead of the workload.”
Mr Jukes said the new appointees have settled in quickly. “They all started around the same time and they have come in with lots of great ideas,” he said. “There’s a lot of buzz in the office now and I think it’s a really good place to be. The atmosphere is really good and we are seeing a lot of good input from different backgrounds. We are really excited to have them.”
Find out more about the company’s services by asearching for Mintivo.
