AI in consulting: why data quality is the real game-changer - #61

Ben: Welcome to the Consulting Pulse, a podcast by cemap. CEMAP is an operations and intelligence platform purpose built for consulting firms. Let's dive into today's episode. Hi, everybody. Delighted this week to be joined by Steven Johnson, CEO and founder of rock, who are a fantastic. I was going to say boutique consultancy, but you're probably a little bit beyond that now. And they do some tremendous things in the tech space. Rather than me, um, give my perspective on, uh, what you do. Stephen, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about you, your background, what Rock do. That'd be a great starting point. Thank you.

Steven Johnson: Yeah, no, thanks, Ben. Yeah, so I've been in the technology industry since 1998, so coming up for nearly 30 years now, which is crazy really. Um, yeah. And I've always been worked in that sense from a quality perspective. So always been I kind of the role of, kind of helping businesses achieve success through high quality software technology that goes into their business and recognizing the importance of that, um, you know, on share price, on customer feedback, all them kind of things. So, um, yeah, really, really kind of helping on that. And I guess it comes from a DNA within myself. I like things done well, things done right. So I'm not technical at all. No technical background. My degree is in marketing. Um, I'm a kind of sales and marketing person by trade, I guess. M. But I think I just like things done well. That's hard for my team sometimes because I hold them to account for making sure there's no mistakes on stuff. But I think that's what we live and breathe. So that's where my passion for quality comes from. I think it's just inherent in my DNA. And I'm not saying I'm perfect, by the way. I'm just saying I like things to be done well, usually by other people rather than me. But I think that's where it comes from and that's where. That's what the business does. But we have, we've got. I've dealt with huge enterprises throughout my career and then rock's been going 17 years this June, so June 26th. Um, and yeah, we just dealt with large organizations. You face this facing this challenge every day and the more complex technology problems they have, the sweeter we can apply our trade effectively.

Ben: I think give the audience a bit of perspective of where you are on that journey. Maybe some numbers or some figures to help sort of like, you know, I feel like you've undersold it a little bit, like you're a really sizable firm now. You're working with some big clients. Yeah, that'd be some great perspective too.

Steven Johnson: Yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah. So we're about 120 odd people strong now. We're best purely out of the uk. Uh, I'm quite passionate about that. We've done lots of academies. I'm quite keen to get people into the industry and have been for about, of the last 17 years. I think we've been doing graduate type academy recruitment for about 12 of them. Um, so really passionate about getting people into industry and fueling it from, from, from the outset, really. Um, so definitely predominantly UK based. Um, yeah, just large companies. We've got specs, heavy Unilever, Linklators, Hexcel, some huge names. I'm working with lots of NHS type trusts as well. So big, big, big companies who do really exciting, um, generally global things and I think that makes it really exciting. We've run projects out of Thailand, out of Australia, out of the us, out of, you know, so we do get around for a small company. Um, obviously now the remote world is slightly different. Um, you can do a lot more remote than you could have done maybe seven or eight years ago. Um, and that's the kind of thing we're up. But we've only ever specialized in the sort of quality, so I'm very keen for that. So my marketing background always kicks in in terms of, you see, people diversify and I get it. But I think we're famous for quality. I think what we've always been renowned for is that quality aspect and I think that does help us transcend a lot of change and a lot of the movement where the market's going to admit, but getting it right should always be a priority and it's not always a priority for businesses, but we always see the output of that. And the other week I won't name which bank is because we're recorded, but it's a very famous bank who, um, every bank account went to zero for a short space of time. That could be quite worrying. Um, and these are big organizations. These aren't sort of small, boutique, niche, you know, three customer banks. These are global large name banks. Um, and we see it all the time with big, big brands and, you know, it's down to quality, uh, at the end of the day. So we still think there's a very, very bad market for what we do. Uh, and our kind of, our bit really is our independence. I think that's the key, is we do provide an independence. We don't do development, we don't do project management, business analysis. So if we tell you it's good, it's because it's good. If we tell you it's bad, it's because it's bad. We have no ax to grind either way. We just want to get you over the line with some upside quality. So that independence plays a really key part of a decision process that a client will make is do they value that independence? And I think we're playing really strong into that.

Ben: Okay. Everyone knows I love a segue, and I'm segueing early. So apologies, Stephen. I'm intrigued by that. So, like, do you have to work with other, presumably bigger consulting firms in one of your enterprise clients where you do you have like a handoff process if they are then implementing something or not?

Steven Johnson: I think it's. I mean, because we've got no. As you know, we'll always play fair and friendly. We're a northern company, so we, we're nice people, I guess. So we always want to do. But we always want to be representing the customer. So it's always the end customer that's in mind for us. So we're there to help protect them. And we very often become kind of the single source of truth. Um, and I've had that throughout my career. I've had the chair on one of the biggest integration projects in Europe, big retailer. A few years ago, the chairman, the only meeting he sat on on the whole program of work was the ones we were running from a testing perspective, because he said, that's the only place I'm going to get the answers to the real answers to the question. And I think that we find that more often we're not always engaged at that level, but we very quickly become a very best friend of the stakeholder, the business stakeholder, because we'll just call it out. We'll call out risks that we can see, things that might hit them down the line, things that aren't being reported on, things that being hidden away by maybe third parties or internal teams. And. And because we're just more focused on the outcome and the end product and that being a high quality, we call that out now. We try and solve problems on the ground and build relationships. It's not like a, you know, telling tales, but equally, we've got to flag the risk. And I think that our position of independence makes the client feel comfortable. But I also think it's quite handy for the SIs and the delivery partners because they know we're there to help them deliver good quality. So anything to try and get around that doesn't particularly make them look good. So you think they want to play ball. So we don't fall out with people. Um, but I think we definitely have quite a powerful position in that, in that bigger play. And um, considering our size and we're up against some of the biggest eyes in this, I think we can be probably, you know, pain in the backside sometimes, but actually we've got the right intentions. It's not personal gain. It's generally just in line with the customer and what they really need and what they demand. And that can come in acceptance testing with the business users. It can come from stakeholder engagement. You know, we want them to enjoy the new solution. You know, it's change generally and people resist change. So our job is to help, educate, encourage, create them. Early adopters create the evangelists and they're the kind of softer skills of what we do as opposed to just making sure it works. We really see our role as helping people deploy this technology successfully. And that's not just does it work on Monday? Is, is it being used? Are people enjoying using it? Can they see the value of it? And we see that as a key part of the whole journey of our, of our engagement.

Ben: Let me try and stick to, uh, um, go back to where we originally were going to focus, which is again an area that I personally love to hear from, particularly from Swimsuit founder. It's like that origin story piece you've hinted a bit. You start in marketing, you got that sales head, but the actual solution that you deliver is a little bit, at least on first appearances, to me, different to that. So how did you discover this niche? How did you recognize this opportunity? What did you first start doing to make that transition into running a, uh, consulting firm?

Steven Johnson: I think for me, the industry, the trade has been going on since software development. Effectively. That's not kind of new new. I think the independent bit is something that came really into the fore. So around Y2K really, um, it's about a billion, one and a half billion pound UK industry. Um, it's a big, it's a decent sized industry. A lot of people wrap it up in other things. We just specialize purely on that. I think that's the difference. Um, and there's other companies who do that. You know, we're in a competitive landscape, but there's loads of project work going on, so there's plenty to go around. I think, um, we very seldom run into competitors. Bizarrely, uh, probably should say that because people got, there's lots of opportunities. But we don't like come up against the same companies every time we speak to a customer. There's some people who still don't really know it's an independent thing. Still, some conversation I'm having now I was having back in 98 when I got into the industry, which is bizarre, you know, failures in automation, failures in just process and what feel like, you know, and you hear all these stories about AI is going to take over the world and it's going to be so advanced. I'm going to. I'm still talking about stuff in 1998 that was new then, it's still new to people now. So I'm trying to get my head around is it going to happen in 18 months? That's what's not happening in 30 years. It does beg a belief sometimes. And I'm not talking small groups, I'm talking some larger companies that don't quite understand this. And it's not disrespectful, it's just they haven't got the head round that there's different ways of solving a problem really, but they understand the business impact of it. So yeah, I think that's where I'd say I think, I think it's. And I think what we've tried to do with car, our position is look at quality as a mindset rather than just a set of activities. So that's kind of our point of difference, I guess, is we look at this. It's about every, you know, quality should be everybody's responsibility. You know, if you're a stakeholder of a big enough workday implementation, it's generally sponsored by chief HR officer or someone in that ilk who wants to change big global deployment. You know, they've got to, to me, they've got to instill the level of quality that's got to go through that. It's not a technology problem, Quality of the software is not a technology problem, it's a sponsors problem. Because they've got to set the tone of how, how well do we want this to go? How well would you want this to work? What's the experience we want of the users, customers, internal, external, etc. And I think if we get the hearts and minds of the stakeholders won over, which is what we try and do, you can instill quality at the outset, quality quite easily. And now I've never known a pro program of work where people at the outset want it to fail or go badly. You just don't. However, I'd say in 75, 85% of the cases, projects go badly and things fail and things off a run. So something along the way fails, something has to fundamentally fail along the way. And we think that quality kind of lens across the whole from the outset, from the business case through, with the right sponsorship, just put the risks and measures in place and the governance structure in place. It doesn't have to be overly governed. It just needs to govern a structure in place and continually measured across the way. And that doesn't happen often enough. People will talk about go no go decisions and they'll have the five key questions you want answering in that meeting. Our view is ask them at the start, don't ask them at the end. And then if you ask the five questions at the start, how are we going to make sure we're on track of these throughout the whole journey? Then all of a sudden when you come to that m meeting, you know the answers anyway. But what happens? It's like, oh, it won't perform. You should have known that years ago, a month ago, six months ago. And that's the problem that happens. And it's for us it feels quite fundamental and quite basic. But big companies continue to do the same thing. So our part is to kind of educate or you know, kind of make the right people understand that quality really is kind of something they can control.

Ben: Was there like a first client who you were working with where you recognize this as an opportunity or a challenge, or did you set the business up knowing that this was an area that you were going to focus on?

Steven Johnson: Absolutely what we wanted to focus on and we knew it and we knew it and we started the business. So I worked in a consultancy before that did this as part, amongst other things, recognized there was a need, uh, in the market for something different. They got consumed by a big offshore player. And when we started the business 2009, we'd since four or five years of the big offshore players coming in, sweeping up this, giving it away in some cases, you know, multi million pound deals, we'll give it free, we'll have the development, all those things like really aggressive, how do you compete with free, you know, all this kind of thing. And the organization were getting locked into 5, 7, 10 year deals on that, which you think is bonkers anyway, but you know that's their call on it. But we all felt speaking to customers and I was obviously still in my role, whereas in my previous role was speaking to customers. And what, what changed for them is that all of a sudden these big sis, because these are huge multi billion Pound companies, the end clients that we were used to dealing with, which were sizable, were just not important to the big companies because they weren't the big monoliths that were really important to them. Companies, they were smaller, so they got trapped like smaller clients. And all of a sudden they were being dictated to how it should work. As opposed to, in my head, is customers king. That's my marketing sales background. Customer is always right. So therefore, this is all about the customer journey. This is all about what the customer wants on the outcome from the deployment. So we just felt there was a, a timing point, but the market was still there because ultimately someone's going to go, we're not getting one we want. Yes, it feels cheaper, but only on their edge, not actual cost. And therefore with no control, we're not getting the quality and it's not that much cheaper that's going to fail. Um, so we knew there was a market to go for, um, and you can't win them all, but there's plenty out there where that still applies.

Ben: And tell us a little bit more about, like, what your role looks like now compared to those early days.

Steven Johnson: I, uh, don't have to go and get the tea bags. I don't have to fix the kettle. I don't have to make sure there's enough money in the bank every day to pay the bills. I don't have to do all the invoicing. I don't have to sell stuff. Um, Jeremy, I think that's when you start. And in some ways, I look back at them fondly. I mean, you are literally doing everything. And anybody who's been through that journey, whether it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 of you, you are in it and you're literally submerged in everything. So that's different. But now I guess I try and play an ambassador role. So doing things like this, I love this kind of stuff that's kind of m my background. I like being out there. I like meeting customers, like prospecting. I like the marketing side of things. Um, as I said, I'm not a delivery person. So what we do, I couldn't do. I, I just calm. Um, but I can position it and sell it. So I try and play to my strengths and that sense. Try. I said try and provide kind of funds available to do good stuff. Try and provide insight, experience, you know, try and let the team flourish, try and m prevent them paths for people to develop. People come from our leadership team through all ranks of business and progress with the business. Really keen on that. Um, very first the numbers in the sense that I feel I have to be, not because I don't trust, it's just more that's what, that's kind of come from a text every morning with a bank balance when we started, I've kind of not lost the edge. I kind of want to know we've got money in the bank. Even though I know it's third, it's nice to see it. And we have a dashboard and scorecard that we go through weekly as a management team just to look at these key metrics and we're really on top of that stuff and that, that helps. It feels like we've got a duty of care to the rest of the business and ah, I think if we're on top of the numbers and we can see stuff and identify stuff, then that's what our role and responsibility ultimately is. And you know, things can go bad. The market can change where we're at the minute and we can make decisions whether they're good or bad. I like to think they're well thought out and based on good data and we've learned that over the years. So I think we put a lot of effort into making sure we can do them things and then never losing sight of that growth trajectory.

Ben: What are some of your learnings that you'd be happy to share with people who are looking to reduce that founder dependence? Um, are there any inflection points or markers over the years that you look back on and go, wow, that was a real change in terms of like me being able to step away from XYZ and other people coming in.

Steven Johnson: It's a really good question. I mean at the point now, and I have been for seven, eight years where I can go on holiday two, three, four weeks and I wouldn't even check my email or my teams, I just don't, I just don't need to. The guys, if they really, really, really needed me, they could text me and I'd deal with something. But my M M reality check is whenever I've been away, ever, there's nothing that's happened that they can't deal with. And secondly, if I was here, I still couldn't deal with it any better than they could. And there's probably nothing I can do to fix what's happened. So it feels like it's like them points and I think that's something I got quite early on is that uh, you know, I need to let the team flourish and things now, you know, there's elements where I'll dip in uh, I'll ask possibly tougher questions than some of some of my team, but that's as much because I'm interested. But obviously coming from the seat I sit in, I can be quite intense with that as well. So I get as a failing but it's not because I don't trust them. I just like, I'm not quite sure that's right. Can you explain that? I want to learn. So in my head I learn by talking. So. And the way I find out more is by asking questions and stuff. That's my M.O. really. But it's not a trust thing. But once you get to that point where you've got a good team in place and you can trust them and they can work well together, I think when you've got a team that work well together, uh, and it's not just on a deputy's person to make their call, they've got people that can sound it off, you know, you've got a team behind the decisions rather than a single person. So otherwise you're just processing a single point of failure to another single point of failing that doesn't feel smart. Um, so I think they're the things I've definitely learned. We use a methodology, ah, called traction, which I always recommend to businesses. It's um, sort of a management methodology effectively and it's all about accountability and we've had that in the businesses for about six years, seven years now, maybe a bit longer. M and that kind of transcends the accountability type thing across the business and we've applied that across the business. Every sort of induction, what it means, you know, the sharing of goals or hitting targets when you set them or objectives or even just tax level. Um, and it gives us a real good sense of control. So you know that things are working on the core goals of the year, you know, the sub components of that that people are working to address and the rest of it. There's very few things that come in that we haven't seen before. So I wouldn't say we've got a playbook for everything, but we've got experience for everything. So if I'm not here, the guys have probably been through it before and will know the holding pattern to play out or just deal with it really. And I think that trust and then knowing that trust is there, uh, probably is the single biggest learning.

Ben: Are you familiar with eos, which is popular over here in North America?

Steven Johnson: Traction is eos. Traction is eos, absolutely. That.

Ben: I know quite a few exponents of that so I can See how that would work. Ah, well, for you. The other thing I noticed is you've used advisors, you continue to use advisors. Um, again, people have got different perspectives on it. Um, but would love to get yours.

Steven Johnson: I think I come into a part I made earlier. I think one of our fundamental things we offer for customers is independence. So I value that and I think our customers should value that and I think our customers do value that. So given that's what we do and sort of portray and evangelize about, then we have to follow, we have to drink our own champagne effectively. So I'm a big fan of independence and all these things. So I've, you know, we've got investors in people because that's. We see as accreditation that matters. So we've got that as an IP planner, but that's an independent body saying we're a good people business, not me saying we're a good people business. You know, we're saying with ISO9001, that's an accredited mark saying we're a good quality business, not me saying we're a good quality business. So. And it's the same with, um, the advisors, you know, so I'm always a big fan of. I learn, as I said before, I learn by listening and talking to people. I really do. That's how my. So I'm always quite open with people. I expose myself, I'll show vulnerability, I'll ask the questions. And most people are keen to help and I learn from that help. So I think I get from that. And when I brought the board of advisors in just over 12 months ago, now what I want to do is pick people who I think have been there on the journey that we've been through, could have different skill sets which would complement the team. Um, I even got marketing background, we've got people background, we've got technologies. So not only the board gets a value of it, but the wider team gets value because there's access points for information and experience, which the guys are happy to share. And that was a key part of my bringing them, um, on board, is it was a holistic service of business, not just a board service. Um, and we got really good people for that who really genuinely care about the business and help. And I think I put some on my personal post on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago. What I found with the advisors is one, yes, the verta challenge. But I'd say 80% of the time, if not more, is about encouragement and about being braver with stuff. And actually, rather than say, I Go. Just had this thought of an idea. M am m I mad to be thinking this? He's like, you should have done it two weeks ago. It's that kind of response where go, brilliant, right? How do we take it forward? And then you get the advice was I think people might be fearful of you're going to get exposed and you're going to get. It's different. I guess that if you've got a private equity type thing on board and I've not been through that and I hear mixed views of that and maybe the pressure is different but with the advisors it feels more. It's uh, a an encouragement engine and a kind of beware of as opposed to don't do that. Why is this not in place? And now whether that's because we've got a good business and then things aren't coming off. But I guess that's why I've felt the benefit is there's more of a, let's do more of this. Let's make sure there's money available for this, invest more in this, keep focusing on them. But that feels like it's more encouraging. So we had a board meeting yesterday and that was all about growth and innovation, you know, and it's a tough, tough market at the minute, but it wasn't like a whole gang. You better watch the pennies. Make sure you don't put chocolate on the biscuits this month. It's none of that. It's like you guys are running a business. How do we take the business forward and come out of this? And I think that's, that's quite valuable. And if anybody's oming and ring about it, that would. I look at it through that lens rather than the lens. I'm going to be accountable and someone's going to ask me tough questions because I can't say it won't happen. But that's not my experience of it.

Ben: I've never heard don't put chocolate on the biscuits, but I absolutely love it and I'm going to steal that. Like, I don't know how you could compare a Hobnob to a chocolate Hobnob. I think you just, you know, already

Steven Johnson: cutting cost, that could be the difference.

Ben: So I've got a really unfair question coming up next. But I actually feel like I should offer, uh, both sides of the coin. So what I was going to ask is like, let's talk about some of the tougher times because on the surface of things, you started the business, grown 220 people, you got fantastic clients, everything's looking great. I'd love to know like some of the tougher times but, but also there's an option like if there, if there's a moment in your history where you look back really fondly or um, there was a really positive that other people can learn from. Feel free to share that too.

Steven Johnson: No, I think the tough times are important and again I've learned and I've. I think we're our fifth economic, serious economic event in the last seven years now. So most people who sit in my seat will probably kind of like have just got over fatigued by pain basically. I think we're just used to it now. I've had that many punches. There's nowhere left that's not been punched before and I generally feel that but it, but. And I think when you learn to deal with that, I mean the first one that really hits us and we'd had a couple of tricky times, you know like kind of things where things don't quite. You don't quite grow as much as you want to or. But they're like small bumps. But the, the kind of post Covid 23 was a 1 that was the first real serious one where we'd gone through two years of really solid high growth which a lot of businesses had and everybody's you know, you uh, mean more back in like it always had to pop at some point but you, when you're in the middle of it you don't see it. It's like. And we had to make some really tough people decisions and we'd never had to do that before. And you know I think there's a couple of. I did a, I did a post on this. In fact I did a video on this and I shared it on LinkedIn. I actually shared it to my leadership team not, not long ago and said you know we might have to ride away a couple of waves in the next few months. Just listen, just watch that. It's not arrogance. But these were genuine learnings at the time when it had happened. So they were fresh and they were real. So some of the learnings was be very close to the numbers. Um, we weren't at the time as close as what we are now. That was a key learning and I got presented with some numbers by a non permanent CFO and I just had a suspicion they weren't right. Um and I just called the meeting straight after and dug a deeper and that meeting probably served 10 jobs because what was presented was almost a delayed thing and it just something in my instincts doesn't quite stack up. And I literally did back a fag packet type stuff and went, I'm seeing it this way. And it was through conversations like, shit, can't be here. You know, we need to move quickly on this. So B, we met. We had to make some pretty tough decisions at a pretty short space of time. But we did that knowing we're doing the. Do it in the right way with the right thinking. It was, you know, it was a. It was a tough, bloody tough time. Really tough time. And um, again, them decisions were communicated. The business on a company update. It wasn't done by an email. I'll be quite open. I burst into tears on that call because it was so tough to do. We'd never had to do anything like that. But I was. But it was genuine. I was like. It was. It was almost like a relief point on that call and you know what I mean? So. And then what happened on the back of that? We had our, uh. And obviously we're general cost quitting stuff at that time. And we had our, uh, what we call our October event, which is kind of our end of our annual year finished, uh, in September. So we have our October, which is a celebration of the year before. It's the kind of these are the goals for the year. And we canceled that meeting in our heads. We canceled it as a leadership team. We said, like, that's one thing. We need to go. It's going to be this money. We can't really afford it. It's going to send the wrong signals anyway. So we made that decision all the more. They didn't announce it, which. And I couldn't sleep at night and I was like, uh. And I woke up in the morning going. And something wasn't right about that decision. It really wasn't right. And I text my CEO at times like going, no, seriously. I said, I think. I think it's a bad idea this. He said, I've been thinking the same. So we said, right, let's do it. And we just said, right, contact the venue. See they can do anything else with it. You know, we've paid some of the money anyway. Can we bring our own booze? All these kind of things. Anyway, we did it, we got it, got to a game. They were brilliant with us. The venue, to be fair, understood the situation and it was probably the best thing we ever did because what happened was it brought the team together and the camaraderie and that were in this together because it wasn't. Everybody could see it was a tough decision. None of it. None of it was pleasant, but as a team, it was like, we'll get through this together. And it felt like genuinely like, this is amazing. Um, and that, you know, I mean, that's. That was taking a negative. Doing something that was counterintuitive from a finance perspective, but from a people perspective was the best single decision. I think we've met, um, just because of how it played out. Um, so we've kind of. That. That really sits with me. That really sits as one of them things where we've turned something quite serious and negative, I guess, into something that turned into something that had a real lasting impact on probably the team as well as me as an owner, really, and realizing that actually there's a bloody good team behind there who generally care about the business. And, you know, it's not just words, it's meaning. Um, and that was really, really, really powerful. So I think them things are definitely things I learn. Um, and then on the back of that, we've got an insane bi pack now on the numbers. Got a dedicated CFO in getting early visibility. You know, that was a learn. That was one of them learnings that you kind of. You think you're close until that stuff happens. You go, actually, we're not as forced as we were. That was a few years ago now. We fixed that very quickly. Um, so, yeah, so they were the things. So I think a lot of anything we've done on that has been definitely taking them lessons in and reusing them. So when we go through stuff comes up, it's wheel out the playbook. What did we do last time? It's never. Any of these things are never nice. The conversation you have to have are always tough about making job cuts or anything like that. We've not had to do that. Um, but we've got the player book to know how we would approach it and things like that. And that sounds. But it's just what business owners need. It's like, what are the lessons learned when they talk about playbooks? Ah, remember them things. Think about the process you did. Um, and it tends to pacify because things can blow away quite quickly as well, and they don't actually manifest. But if you're prepared for it, then at least as a management team, that's the bit you're responsible for, is being prepared for stuff that comes in and doesn't come in stuff. So, um, there's definitely things like that.

Ben: That's a really good share. Appreciate it as well, because, um. Yeah, that doesn't. That doesn't sound easy and as, as somebody who doesn't own a big consulting firm, I can only think of how difficult that would be professionally and um, personally and I complete but. And I'm sure a lot of people will empathize with the like feeling like a punch bag over the last six, seven years. I just, I can't imagine what can come next. Like. Sure. I just have no idea anymore.

Steven Johnson: Um, you look out the window and guess there's anything flying over. Yeah. Just. Yeah.

Ben: And what about the. On the happier positive side? Is there anything like from your journey that you look back on with like real fondness as a, as either a turning point or something that like worked really well that's worth sharing?

Steven Johnson: I think I tend to, you know I don't naturally because I'm a forward looking person anyway. It's just how um, I'm my day and I'm wired I guess. But I, you know I do look now and again, you know them first graduate intakes we did because that felt quite seismic at the time. It's quite a big you know we still got people in the business who came through that. We just had one guy who left last year, he was probably just short 12 months ago been with us but he ended up running our biggest client project and he come through that first graduate program and things like that make you really proud because you actually, you know, I always say, you know, rocks part people's journey. It's not the only thing they'll ever work on and I accept that. We just want to make it a good experience while they're here. Whatever they join at the outset of the careers or wherever they join within the career spot, as long as you make it a good experience and they leave firmly, then that's kind of what I want it to be. Now obviously it doesn't always work that way. People don't always work out. There's always grats. I get that. Uh, but that's what the intention is always. So I think things like that when you see them success stories, see how people progress, we'll see people have come through. I get a lot of satisfaction out of uh, that there's a lot of personal pride in that because you know you can see you changing people's lives and that's quite powerful. You know when you think about what we're really doing is you know, on the base of it we're just making sure some of the software works at the kind of nuts and bolts level. But actually where the people who are doing that and advancing through their careers. That gives them a better lifestyle, gives them a chance to have families and all things. And you can't. That does feel good. It also gives you the opposite side where you've got 120 employees, which is like probably 400 people you're really looking after and the households and you go, that's a big responsibility as well. But try not to play that one too much. But yeah, things like that, like IIP Platinum was really, really good. Wins some of the awards we've won throughout the years when we've really felt like we were punching above our weight. I always love winning a customer, especially a big one against when we compete with a big Si or something. I love that. But that's just my sales hat. That's like, I love taking on m. The bigger. The bigger the competitor, the better for me. Um, there's just something in that that's just really satisfying and that's never changed. I don't think it would.

Ben: Let's delve into that. Because you do have a sales and marketing background and consultancies have, ah, very differing sales and marketing strategies which I find really interesting. Some are entirely reliant on referrals, others big on inbound, like talk us through, because you're at size and scale now, where I presume it's going to be multifaceted. But talk us through sort of like sales and marketing strategy, your ability to win some of those deals.

Steven Johnson: So I think we've got a fairly clear icp. Um, we've worked hard on that. Um, we very much build on, um, getting good cases, good references within that. So we can kind of support the ICP prospecting with kind of good stories and knowledge. Um, we've been fortunate to keep all the clients for a long time. So we've got longevity there. We've proven that of many clients and big, you know, we've got Unilever, for example. There's been a client, I think it was our second or third client back in 2010, still a client today. So I think we've got things like that on our side. I think we, we invest. It's hard to know whether we invest enough a lot or not enough because you speak to different people and different perspectives on it. Um, you know, we've got few people dedicated to new business. We've got people who, after client management, we've got people who dedicate to marketing. We've got support staff in that. We've got me out there prospecting. We've got other parts of the business where I've got a goal across like ah, everybody within the company. It's called Everyone help Rock. Everyone helps rock grow as a goal against a company. Um, and that's where people come to where it's sharing LinkedIn posts, whether it's referring to it's going to events and things like just being out there. So I think that's a development opportunity for them as well as any kind of ancillary brand benefits we get from that. I'm very proud of the brand and I'm very passionate about the brand I. E Put a comma in the wrong place on the wall beside you. So I think so. Do you know what I mean? But I like that. I think we're a quality business so things that go out have got to be of a high standard as well. So I think when we are ah, strike round on new business proposals is very very high because we qualify hard. I put a system in place six years ago basically integrated into the workflows within the HubSpot. So we've used kind of bash practice on kind of qualification processes and therefore it's kind of a score metrics. But what this gives us the ability to do is know when to qualify out. Um, and that means we're kind of wasting less time on or noise effectively which I'm as as much a skill in sales as it is about causing the deals and I think let's putting them disciplines in place and maintaining that discipline and holding the team accountable for that discipline um, is definitely worked. Um, I think yeah. And again we've tried different things. We're at events like today we're at events where we sponsor some events, speaking slots, getting out of these kind of things. You know we never start. I wake up every morning thinking how do I win a new customer? Um, I don't think that's ever left me. Um, I don't think it ever will because I think that's the only thing that's the only fuel that really matters on an SME business I think is revenue. Um, everything else is great but without the revenue your problems just really spiral. Do you know what I mean? The cynical and the team know that internally we talk about new business and growth a lot. It's not greed, it's just without revenue you're goosed. You can't pay for anything without any money in the bank. So. And um, you've got to keep talking that up and making sure that's in a good place. So I think we, we, we kind of get that and I get that and I Think that's where, you know, maybe that's helped us scale in terms of growth or where we got to. Is that kind of never the relentless pursuit of that. Um, and it's been a, again in the last one of the years. I mean, we had our record year last year ending September, um, which, you know, with 24 and a half percent growth against a backdrop of the IT consultancy market. Quantum megabyte, um, was two and a half percent, so we kind of booked that significantly. Um, that's not arrogance, that's just. That's what we were presenting them numbers yesterday in the board meeting. And yeah, we, we know what we hit, but this year will be a lot tougher. So we see them cycles as other people do, but we kind of. Yeah, and it's just never letting that, that drop, really, and then making sure we do a good job on mother.

Ben: Well, congrats on that. Last year's growth. That is. I read megabyte too. That's really like quite substantial. Um, what do you put that down to? And then no doubt you're not going to say there's one silver bullet, but are there any lessons in that that are worth sharing?

Steven Johnson: I think because we work in a predominantly project world, ultimately then I think we have several clients, key clients, who are going through quite a bit of change work. We were needed, so I think we were more good relationships, delivering a great piece of work and when more comes, you win it. So there's kind of the basics really, do a good job and you'll get rewarded. Um, which is quite a simple one, but I think it's absolutely true. Um, I think that's. I think it was new business that was really tough last year. So a lot of that came through existing customers really. Um, and just doing a good job and being constant. Um, and I always think, you know, we talk about tough times early and I think, I always think with this is just do the things you can control. And doing a great job for our customers is something that's absolutely in our gift every morning, every day. And I think that's what we should. That's what the guys are kind of really focused on is like the delivery team, which is probably 80% of our business, is just do a great job. That's all. It's not all we ask in a kind of facetious way, but that's what we ask. Just do a brilliant job, make sure the customer's happy, do everything we can. Call out any problems, it's just deal with them. If you do that, you tend to get rewarded by your customers. Um, and then they become clients and referrals for other stuff, clearly, and things like that. So, um, I think that's, that's. There's no more than that, to be honest. There's a bit of luck needed. Um, but doing a good job ultimately will reward you with existing customers. Um, and then hopefully they manifest when markets pick up with new customers because you've got the references and the capabilities and the case studies effectively finds a guy, literally live this morning, who I interviewed for a job eight months ago, two years ago maybe. Um, didn't end up joining. Um, and he just ran me this morning with a. Uh. He's been in another company and he's just provided a lead. So never fall out with people. Is the other bit as well nice?

Ben: It's such a small world. Like you never. Whilst I say that's nice, like, it also doesn't surprise me in a way because it's amazing how like if you invested in that call, you obviously did, which was an interview, but it could be anything. If you invest in that time on that conversation and you're memorable, it can come back around. So, um, I also love. What resonates with me from more of a consulting perspective is I see so many firms now chasing revenue, which I think is different to trying to win new business. It's. It's tough to win new business. Chasing is like almost getting into desperation states. Like it's the only option that we've got. But you've managed to grow by what, you know, you could just classically label that account management client relationship. I appreciate that's probably built on like almost decades worth of really good work. But there's still revenue opportunities out there in the market, but it just doesn't have to come by chasing the next shiny object essentially is what in practical terms I get from that.

Steven Johnson: Yeah. And there is. And there's an element of, uh, you know, been through and um. These are me speaking because I think I know it all. I think some of these are just learnings over the years and I think there's a temptation sometimes when things are toughest to take anything. Um, I'm, um, maintaining against your ICP and really. And having a real good reason not to because there are some exceptions. So for example, something where we go against our kind of client of a certain size and could be that the technology is really interesting and it could be part of the sector, but it's a small company but it's got a really interesting technology and well, what they Then face into all these ICP type clients. So that could be a weigh in. So that's the only time. But the rest of it could be, it's like, I know trends, but I can't play it back to the numbers. Is like we'll get that much revenue from it. Take off the gross margin of that, it's half of that. Then we've got to pay your salary to manage it and whatever days it takes to do that, that take that off. Then the cost of the business of that that will actually cost us money. Now do you want to spend your time costing us money? Do you want to spend your time generators money and do you know what I mean? And it's like, and it's like, oh, okay. It's like I've not thought about that. I said, I know and I'm not. But he said that sometimes it's like that. And I said, you know, it's a new client that said a handful of days that's got no chance of going anywhere doesn't actually make one material difference. And two, it actually costs you time because you still want to do a good job for it. So you still have to put the same governance rules. You just have to do the basics, the contracts, the invoicing stuff to do. All of them cost component parts, but that's basically everything gone. So it's been disciplined on the icp, dips on the qualifications. And that's harder when times are tough. And I get that, uh, having been there, done that and I'm realizing that you've kind of got not a high chain of clients because you've got done a bad job at your high chain of clients because they were never going to be any other than a high chair because they had a point solution that needed six weeks working. You go, what? Another customer? It's great. It was cheers. They go, yeah. But in week seven they're not customer anymore. They're happy, but they're not going to spend any money with you. Now people argue well that they might then go work somewhere else. And I get all that. But my experience, them things rarely happen. They rarely happen. So it's just about being disciplined. And sometimes that's a tough, tough love conversation needs to have is that I get it, you've not done a bad, you know, it's not a bad thing you found this customer, but just spend your time finding ones like this. Um, but that's down to discipline over the years.

Ben: I'd love to get your perspectives in the last part of this on the future, you're always focusing on that and you know what opportunities, challenges do you foresee this might be great timing? It's just come off the back of sounds like a board meeting about it yesterday. So whilst I don't expect you to share your minutes, um, it'll be great to get your perspective on what you think is happening in the market and the opportunities or challenges for a firm such as yours.

Steven Johnson: I think it's a really, it's a really interesting. So I've been around 30 years now so I've seen the whole automation bit, I've seen the whole RPA bit, I've seen the now living and breathing every hour AI bit. Um, I get a very mixed view from people who I call in my kind of technology network. I've got decent sized network and a lot of them are really good technologists and I've seen them go from this is absolutely going to change everything to this isn't all that literally. Um, I've seen a real mix of reviews on that. I think we see a lot of opportunity with the supplementary uh, type solutions around the move to AI of adoption. I think data is still one of the biggest challenges I've seen in 30 years. Underlying data for complex organizations, M and A activity mainframe system, you know what I mean? All them things are still huge challenges for organizations. I think there's loads of work around that and opportunity around that because if AI is predicated on having good data then no business will survive. So um, so it needs that and I think the focus is on that. So we think that's from a quality perspective that plays into our hands. I think that's really good. I think AI itself in terms of how we use it, adopt it, I think we're, I think we've got some good use cases and some client examples. But again I think the efficiency gains are uh, kind of productivity rather than seismic. I think they are definitely good at certain things. I think they can help. Um, I think I've encouraged people to, with the client permission clear on client stuff is to use it, adopt it but think about what else it can give us rather than kind of what can it always save. Because the savings in my experience have been like 10, 15, 20% maybe on some parts of it. Now if you've got a team of three or four that's not material difference really to a client because you can't have a, you know, 6 8th of a day on the last day of the month type thing, it's not going to make a difference but if you can produce more in that time, that's better I think to get bigger scale I think then also 10, 20% so it becomes noticeable on a kind of thing. So I think that's interesting without being firm, um, yet I think there's, we see some good things out of it. Um, I think things like we're building now using Vibe coding for um, experiments a lot with internal type application. I think that's been quite good actually. So again, what I've been really keen to encourage the business is to adopt it in pockets within controls or safeguards of things, but try do stuff. So I just got co pilot license, uh, extended just on me. And I've now effectively created a series of prompts and things that are now effectively acting as an EA for me, a PA for me. Um, but what I'm learning is about the importance of good instruction as opposed to what AI can do. And I'm realizing a really good prompt is just a really good instruction, which if I give a human a really good instruction, I'll get what I want. And I think that's a real, that's almost like the biggest learning for me is actually a prompt, a really well worded prompt. It's just a clear instruction. I say, if I said to you bake me a cake, then you could make any number of type of cake and you still go, go, I don't really like chocolate, why'd you make me chocolate cake? Yeah, we said bake a cake. If I do a problem that's pretty loose, I'm going to get the wrong cake. But if I say I want a, I don't know, whatever, strawberry, whatever cake, I want it to be this high, I want it to be this color, I want it to be delivered in this box. I'm going to get the cake I want and you can do that, apply that to humans really. So I think some of the noise and stuff comes down to um, ambiguous ambiguity. We see that with system requirements it's ambiguity that kills not, not AI or technology or people. It's the ambiguity of the requirement. So I think in some of my learning it's been almost like how is this more holistic challenge that we can solve? Um, so I think helping customers with that part of it is key because I think we can use it and we can test against it and we can kind of leverage some, maybe commercial benefits in the future. But I'm not one of them. Wakes up every morning, guide the world's going to end because of this. I just don't Think now I've had this devil and angel on my shoulder for quite a while. That's how I describe it. I've had. Is this going to take over? Is there going to be no business here in five years versus actually the business can be five times bigger if we get it right. And I'm um, literally in that. I've constantly been in that for years. But I think we're now getting to a point where we've got some good structure, we've got a good strategy around it, we've got some good early adoption and just in that I call it experimental phase. But in terms of internally understanding it, its capabilities, um, and I think when we speak to customers, they're all in a very similar place. I, um, think we can help go on some of them journeys with customers rather than be the person who said just go through us because we do all this right. I just, I might get this completely wrong. I just don't see that happening when

Ben: I think about like what could happen. Hypotheticals and people building things ad hoc, um, particularly in a business of any genuine size. I think beyond startup phase, um, that quality component that you focus in on is the bit that's gonna be still be really loose. Like where's the check and balance on it? I mean I've already seen lots of early examples of people that have vibe coded or built something and you get an instant gratification. That sugar hit, I built something, aren't I incredible? Um, and then the long tail effect is like, well, what have I built? Like, how do I maintain this? Uh, does it connect in with anything? Um, I'd love your perspectives there, given your very unique vantage point with that quality perspective.

Steven Johnson: Yeah, well, I think that, I mean I've never known a project really fail because of technology. I'd say 99% of projects fail because of people. And either not because they're bad, but because they're misdirected, it's not well structured, it's not very good. And you've got politics with organizations, you've got kind of skill set deficiency, you've not got enough people, you've got a whole host of that red man, the human. And that's not necessarily changing with all these things. The policies are still going to be there, the dynamics of change are going to be there. The uses of the technology are going to be people, all the things that are still maintaining. So technology has not been. And if this is a technology that's going to help, it's just kind of, it needs to be Controlled M. Whatever it is. I also think your point really goes well on um, the kind of vibe coding things. Because one of the reasons why I've removed the SaaS models is because they didn't want to have maintain. They didn't want to build their own. They didn't want to. They wanted to have good integrations with open APIs. You want it to have connectivity and integration with third party solutions software so they didn't have to buy all themselves. All them things still happen. And why would I want to take on something that Salesforce can do out, uh, the box and that take all the risk of doing that, but it's applying to other customers. Why would I want to benefit from that? I'm trying to replicate it myself and maintain it and all of a sudden you're going to have this big incumbent team supporting stuff they built really quickly that might not be that good. Remember, that's just shifting the cost somewhere else that's not actually being efficient. Um, and the skill set is going to, well, you can build it again. I've had the conversation. People say we just build it again. If it doesn't work well, it's like, surely that's not really a good answer to an enterprise question. That's not going to get past the risk board. So I think the quality bit, and I'm a big fan of the Airbnb kind of, you know, if you hit a wall fast, it's going to, it hurts. But if you're building so much that you're just building so much momentum and so much speed and it's going faster, it's just going to hurt more when you hit the wall. And ultimately, you know, I've said this on a few things in live events and things, you know, at some poll execs will go to jail because of stuff that technology does. And we'll see that a little bit with the horizon stuff. And I know that was probably different from the technology being the. It was the how it was coming up essentially. But I think ultimately his accountability's got to sit somewhere and it'll sit on the exact team and CIOs and CTOs will sit on them teams and something will go wrong with technology. And I think there'll be a use case out there. I've said it a few years ago. In the next two, three years, I think there'll be an example made of kind of negligence by a technology. And I think that when someone goes to jail on it, then all of a sudden the lights are flashing then and I think that's probably why a lot of the big enterprises, and there's only a personal opinion why bigger. The brands are a bit nervous about it because they're going, well, we can't blame someone else for this. We're not politicians. You can't just blame someone else. And um, we've got to be accountable for it. And therefore if we're not quite sure how it's got to. We're not quite sure what the data behind it is.

Ben: Right.

Steven Johnson: And we're not quite sure of all these decisions we're making and what can we hold up in front of the cup? Do I want to be the one that gets. Am I going to be the first? And I think there's an element of that and rightly so. And that's good. I think that's a good control mechanism and focus the efforts and getting it right and then benefit from the technology. But I just don't think people, we as a human race move that quickly. My experience of 30 years, we haven't moved that quickly today. I don't know why we're suddenly going to move like 10 times quicker bit now. It just doesn't, it doesn't quite stack up to me, given there's so many people this day because they're going to worry about the jobs. It's like Turkey's market for Christmas type stuff. He's like, why would I do it?

Ben: I do keep looking at like classic adoption curves over periods of time and wonder about that as well. Like, is this the thing that breaks adoption curves that have existed for time immemorial and we've got a larger population? Who knows? I mean, we'll find out. Um, Stephen, it's been an absolute pleasure as always. Love being able to connect and talk to you, get some insights. One final thing. Is there any, is there anything that I've not asked that I should have asked? Is there any final, um, insights that you think uh, are worth sharing? And if not, um, I will wish you a good day and hopefully connect with you in the not too distant future as well.

Steven Johnson: Yeah, no, I think, I think it's covered everything. I think for us it's just the opportunities in just getting things right. Just one organization. So really think about getting stuff right. Duty care to their employees, other customers. And uh, if you wake up every morning thinking about them two things, then giving them something they can use that works, it's kind of fundamentally right, I think. Um, M. And that's what we can have.

Ben: CMAP is an operations platform for consulting firms. The solution is used by hundreds of professional services firms to m manage everything from pricing and timesheets to resourcing and billing, enabling you to optimize utilization drive project margin. Get a single source of truth across your firm.