Conversations with... Paul Rowe of Rowe IT

Dan White, Director and member of Bishop Fleming’s Technology, Innovation and Growth team chats to Paul Rowe, Co-Founder of Rowe IT. 

Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today, albeit virtually! Can we just start with a little bit about Rowe IT and the background behind your business? 

"My wife and I founded the company back in 2008. My background is in software engineering and at the time I worked with a Plymouth based software company.  Hannah’s background was in management gained in the Royal Navy.

We decided to enter the world of freelance and from here Rowe IT was born to provide software engineering and technical consultancy. It very quickly progressed and rapidly became a network of associate consultants working on various projects. In 2014 we realised that there was far more demand to take on projects in their entirety rather than just assisting clients with specific skills on a project, and that’s where the growth journey really started.

We soon realised that to achieve our growth plans, we would need to build out a core permanent team rather in addition to our associates. It also required us to change our business model, rather than using agencies or third parties, we moved to tendering directly for projects, often seeing us to go up against multi bigger consultancies.

We now have a team of 27 people, from just seven back in 2015, and have seen around 30% year on year organic growth in both head count and revenue. And we have done all of that whilst staying profitable and without requiring additional funding.

When we first started Rowe IT we all worked remotely or on client sites, however with the change in business model, we felt it was important to find a place which we could call home, get everyone together to share ideas and collaborate so we moved in to Plymouth Science Park in 2017 (ironic as it has now done full circle and we are back temporarily home working). We have also achieved another aspect of our growth plan which was to get on to key government frameworks including those on the digital marketplace such as DOS and G-Cloud."

I’d be interested to know more about the type of work you do for these companies…

"We work on a range of different projects for various clients, from working with the Met Office to help manage their data and making it available to other organisation, advising how the MOD can make better decisions with the data that they have, helping organisations like the Forestry Commission move their systems to the cloud, or even supporting NATO in improving how systems from a coalition can work together, from day one.

On behalf of our customers we do a lot of experimentation, testing and working on prototypes to ensure a good user experience.

One of the projects we have recently delivered for the Met Office has gone through the whole journey from interviewing the users of the system, understanding user requirements and working out how these can be met, before building the solution and then going live."

And what about Covid-19, how has that impacted the way you work at Rowe IT?

"Pre-Covid-19 we were in the office most of the time, but from March 17th we switched to remote working. We were geared up for this anyway, but the challenge has been making sure all staff have a permanent place to work at home rather than the ad-hoc set up they may have had previously.

After the first lockdown we gradually opened the office, allowing people to come in if they wanted to and with a limit of only five people in at one time. This gave people the face-to-face interaction they needed whilst staying safe, so we hope after this lockdown we can do the same. Although most of us are working remotely, we have found new ways to keep in touch.

For example, we have now started doing formal ‘all hands’ meeting whereby the whole team get together virtually to discuss the projects we have on. The aim is for everyone to feel like they are in the loop and in the know. We have also had various team video lunches where everyone moves around and enters different rooms with around 5 people. Everyone can have a conversation for 10-15 mins and catch up with people that they may not be working on projects with but normally would have bumped in to each other in the kitchen or grabbing a coffee. We’ve had some great feedback and it all helps towards keeping our staff morale up.

With regards to business performance as a result of Covid-19, I think we have been fortunate that our projects have not yet been hit directly. I say ‘yet’ because I suspect in the next couple of years there will be a squeeze on public sector spending so we do have one eye on that and can imagine there will be a lot more scrutiny in years to come on spending, but we are well placed should it happen. We have been incredibly fortunate, and my heart goes out to businesses that have been affected by this horrendous virus through no fault of their own."

And moving away from Covid-19 and towards better news, congratulations for being shortlisted for the Scale-Up Award at the Tech South West Awards 2020. Can you tell me a little bit about your growth plans and experience of the scale-up phase for you?

"Thank you, we are delighted to be shortlisted for this award! I guess the need to expand and grow really came from demand. I could foresee the way we were providing services to clients previously, was soon to be outdated and our clients would move away from that approach, so we needed to adapt and grow with the times. That was one of the drivers, but it was also natural evolution as well, we felt ready to make the next step up.

I was fortunate to be selected for a scale-up growth course run by Goldman Sachs in 2019. They have been running the programme in the UK and US for a number of years. It is fully funded by Goldman Sachs and covers all basis of scaling up, providing formal training in conjunction with Oxford University. That was really helpful for me and would recommend any business who is on a growth journey to engage in scale-up programmes that are on offer. One of the best things about it, is it puts you in contact with other business owners, MD’s, CEO’s, so you come out with a wider network of peers. 

Regarding our growth plans, as I said earlier, we immediately set out to build a permanent team to get onto the government frameworks and we also had to amend our bidding model so business development and recruitment were at the forefront of our minds.

We began by recruiting a key hire, Steve Reed, who has been fundamental in establishing our growth plans and embedding the culture we have at Rowe IT today. One of the first things that Hannah, Steve and I did was to sit down and think about what values were important to us and how we wanted the company to evolve. We wanted to be sure of the type of company we were trying to build. Hannah led on embedding our values and purpose and that set the foundation for our growth and recruitment strategies.

An important part of our role as the leadership team is to review our growth plan, to make sure that what we are executing day to day is in the direction of travel of where we want to go. Our values really are our rule book, by being explicit about what they are we have embedded a healthy, collaborative culture that will stick as we continue to grow our team."

And what about talent, have you ever struggled with recruiting the right people?

"Nationally there is problem with talent. I think you have to play the long game with it, you need to hire based on calibre first and skills second. We focus on hiring people who are enthusiastic to learn about new technologies and their capacity to do that, what we consult in and deliver today won’t be the technology of tomorrow.

The South West generally has a high calibre of people. We have been really impressed with the level of talent from our hires.

To give an example, we have hired several individuals who were relatively fresh out of university. Our expectation was that they would begin to add value to the company after a year or so once they have their feet firmly in to the organisation. However, we have found that in a matter of weeks they have been adding real value.

A lot of that we put down to the correct pairing, putting new recruits with people who have worked in the industry for years, and they are very quick to soak up the information and perform tasks the same as those who have been doing it for years. It’s really rewarding to see!

Over the years we have tweaked our recruitment process, accessing the technical calibre but also focusing on soft skills. People think that to work in a tech firm you just need to be techy, but that’s not the case, having those soft skills allows you to work with other people, share ideas and collaborate – that’s what we are really looking for!"

Great, and what’s coming next for Rowe IT?

"We plan to continue to expand, doing more with existing clients and also building relationships with new clients. Our aim is to be the partner of choice for our clients, both old and new.  This will allow us to continue to grow the team, giving people variety and good career progression – that’s really important to us."