Membership | Case Studies

1stAdvisory

George Ryder Managing Director 1stAdvisory Ltd

1stAdvisory Ltd is a UK registered international consultancy engaged in helping organizations maximize ROI on IT and Technology. We place particular emphasis on the potential of Outsourcing for our clients, both as an agent for change and achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

1stAdvisory is differentiated by its ‘hands-on’ credentials, which range beyond the pure advisory function to include programme implementations through to staff mentoring, training and coaching. In addition, our Leadership and Associate teams comprise ‘C-level’ internationally deployable, multi-lingual executives with Tier-1, service organization experience in both the Private and Public sectors. These professionals operate out of the UK, Dubai, Spain and the US, underpinning a broad geographical remit.

We are a recognised contributor to thought leadership within our industry, principally through Journal Publications and Conferences.

Like any new start up 1stAdvisory was faced with the problems of incorporation and establishment alongside the urgent need to gain market entry and recognition and the vital flow of hard cash that it entails.
The market challenge in particular proved to be an intractable one, especially for a consulting firm like
1stAdvisory, which relies heavily on networking and word of mouth.  The time needed for marketing was often stolen from that dedicated to the logistics of establishment and this situation was further exacerbated by the often prohibitively expensive costs of the option of delegating the task to professional marketing companies.

An invitation to the Regent /Intellect annual conference proved to be propitious since it resulted in 1stAdvisory joining Intellect soon thereafter. Several factors contributed to the decision to seek membership of Intellect in particular

1. Intellect represents a community of over one thousand IT and technology companies in the UK and as such represented a readymade network of organisations, which might benefit our company in many respects.
2. Services to members incorporate often free opportunities to attend seminars and courses provided by domain experts, on a wide range of topics.
3. Participation in and support for, Intellect activities can bring recognition and opportunity.
4. The staff at Intellect are accomplished professionals who are dedicated to promoting the interests of their membership.

Considering the above, the membership fee represented outstanding value for money.

When viewed in retrospect, Intellect membership proved to be a boon for 1stAdvisory in that we were able to combine, in a significantly cost effective way, our networking activities with the need to keep up to date with germane developments in our industry.

In addition the impressive Intellect Russell Square facility proved ideal for our client and staff meetings alike, which otherwise, as a small company, could have been problematic.

In particular Intellect membership proved to be highly motivating for our staff who now have access to a source of knowledge and ‘best practice’ in several areas of IT and Technology; often the preserve of the large established brands.

ChangeBEAT

Ian Henley ChangeBEAT Biography

ChangeBEAT people are Technology Business Experts and Change Management Specialists. We work with executives in the technology industry to improve the way their organisation plans, markets, develops, sells and deploys technology. Please visit ChangeBEAT.com for more information.

Life after Intellect

ChangeBEAT has been a member of Intellect since 1999 when the company was founded.

ChangeBEAT strongly recommends membership to all technology businesses, great and small. As the UK’s single point of reference for the information technology, telecommunications and electronics industries, Intellect represents a powerful lobbying body and information service to the government, regulators, customers and consumers alike.

What are the specific benefits of being an Intellect member?

We strongly believe in Intellect for these reasons:

• It is the best place to meet new people in the industry and to maintain and revive old acquaintances. People we have met at Intellect have proven to be mentors, suppliers, business partners, customers, recruits and colleagues. One thing is for sure, the more contacts you have in the industry the more you can do.
• It provides us with real insight into the issues companies are facing and the new challenges and opportunities that are just around the corner. In developing markets, for example; by talking with other companies, be they competitors or potential partners; we have a much better view of when and where future business will really develop and how we can maximise our own.
• Since becoming a member, ChangeBEAT has benefited in this way from participation in many of the high quality seminars, industry briefings, business programmes and debates for which Intellect is the foremost provider. Ian Henley the Chairman of ChangeBEAT serves on the membership committee.
• Finally Intellect provides a place to go to be part of the industry; to say “here we are, ready for business and ready to participate in the future of the industry”.

Innogistic

Dave Roberts MD Innogistic

• Innogistic is a private company employing 65 people in Bristol and Fleet. We provide public and private sector organisations with innovative IT solutions for managing complex business processes, data and geospatial information. For further information visit www.innogistic.co.uk

• Intellect I believe fulfils a very important function representing our industry particularly with lobbying and representation which for SME’s is always difficult.
• It is also a great organisation for meeting similar people and organisations where views can be openly shared and discussed.
• The bulletins they issue are always well written and informative if not always directly relevant to us;  their website a mine of useful information.

• Being primarily Bristol based we do not get to many of the Intellect events and functions in London (that said the Annual Regent Conference this year was especially good), nor do we use their facilities much. However they organize regional events, in particular breakfasts briefings that I always try and make a point of attending as they are always informative and inclusive of a good mix of people.
• I have also found their ESCROW arrangements to be much easier to deal with than alternatives.
• They are a friendly helpful team that is not pushy and genuinely aims to provide support and good service; I only wish they had regional offices as well as events!

Managed Networks

Ben Rapp Managed Networks Biography

Who are we?

Managed Networks provides outsourced IT management and support for small and medium enterprises. We cover the whole ICT lifecycle, from consulting and design through supply and implementation to pro-active support and eventual disposal. Our core focus is on businesses in the 10-50 user space, although we have offerings for customers with as few as 2 and as many as 500 users. At the time of writing we have offices in three UK locations (London, Birmingham and Runcorn, Cheshire) and around 35 staff.

Managed Networks also offers DesktopLive, a full-service hosted desktop incorporating secure storage, Microsoft Exchange email and Microsoft Office all for a single monthly fee per user. In addition to improving flexibility and reliability and reducing lifetime costs, choosing a hosted solution can reduce an SME’s carbon footprint from IT by up to 80%.

Managed Networks is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, with a number of enhanced Microsoft certifications including Small Business Specialist. We are also partners with Dell, Easynet, Symantec, Citrix, Cisco and Avaya; each partnership evidences our commitment to quality and technical excellence, which is backed up by extensive and continuous staff training.

Life before Intellect

Managed Networks has been a member of Intellect for more than a decade, when it was still known as the CSSA. In common with many smaller members, we joined initially for the escrow and room hire services, and for the marketing cachet associated with the badge. This understanding of the organisation’s value lasted for about six years.

In 2003 Managed Networks’ newly-recruited marketing manager, Nigel Davey began to take a stronger interest in the value of our membership of what by then was known as Intellect. He joined the committee of the SME Advisory council and started organising and attending meetings. By 2004 he felt strongly enough to make the case that our CEO, Ben Rapp should also get involved.

Life after Intellect

Nigel is vice-chair of the Marketing and Sales Group and co-organised the Marketing and Sales Conference 2008. He’s also a member of the Revenue Generation Working Group.

Ben is chair of the SME Advisory council, a member of the Membership Committee, a committee member and former vice-chair of the Outsourcing and Offshoring Group. He speaks regularly at Intellect Information Mornings, is speaking at the 2009 Intellect Sourcing Conference and represents Intellect at a number of industry working groups. He also co-wrote the Intellect White Paper on MiFID.

What are the specific benefits of being an Intellect member?

Collateral

The material available through logging in to the Intellect website is a gold mine; we’ve used contract boiler-plates and referred to any number of white papers, as well as referencing past presentations, e.g. Tony Fish on the Web 2.0 lifecycle for an eye-opening alternative view of product and service development.

Services

Many members know about the escrow service; how many also know about and use the HR and legal advice services? Our HR manager, Curleen Williams, is a regular user of the HR query service.

Networking

We found Intellect’s formal and informal networking is the single most important benefit of membership. Although we are unlikely, given the nature of our business, to sell anything to other members, we have learned a huge amount from the people we have worked with on committees and events, and through them we’ve gained access to a huge network of potential customers and partners. We’ve also given and received a significant number of cross-referrals.

Partnering

Some of the connections we’ve made through Intellect have turned into formal engagements. Notably we have worked with, or are still working with:

Speechly Bircham LLP
Performative plc
The RM2 Partnership Limited
Pareto Law
JI Software
Quickstart Global (through Dr Richard Sykes)

Access and lobbying

One main benefit of trade associations, seen from a smaller company perspective, is leverage – gaining access to, and being heard by, people and organisations with whom you would otherwise struggle to gain traction. Our experience ranges from face-to-face meetings with senior politicians including several Shadow Ministers, through high-level contact with government departments and related think-tanks and quangos, to inspirational business leaders and senior management at our top vendors. We’ve had the opportunity to contribute to the shaping of legislation, including flexible working, R&D tax credits, the Glover report on SME involvement in the public sector supply chain, lifetime learning and more.

Last words?

In our view, you only get maximum benefit from Intellect (or any trade association) if you get involved. So if you’re not a member, or you are but only passively, we would encourage you to participate actively in Intellect. There are bound to be several groups and events that are directly relevant to your business.

Memset

Kate Craig-Wood Memset Biography

Who are we?

Memset is a leading provider of flexible dedicated server hosting and IT infrastructure outsourcing solutions for businesses, based in Guildford. We are a relatively small company (under £2m turnover), but are growing rapidly and this year joined the ranks of the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50.

Our services range from virtual dedicated servers, ideal for a small business's Web site and email, to fully managed, disaster resilient server clusters with 24/7 monitoring and emergency response, complete with a 100% network uptime guarantee.

Even in the current poor economic climate our growth remains strong thanks to our IT hosting solutions, where a customer can increase their IT resources, cut cost and “go green” without any capital expenditure by outsourcing some or all of their IT infrastructure to us.

We have a strong focus on energy-efficiency and in 2006 became the UK's first Carbon Neutral accredited ISP. Since then, as well as winning a number of awards for innovation, IT strategy and environmentalism, we have been voted the UK's Best Web Host for the last three years running by PCPro magazine readers.

Life before Intellect

Before we joined Intellect in early 2007 we were quite a different company; we were not interacting significantly with the industry as a whole and felt we were perhaps missing out on opportunities as a result.

Furthermore, Kate (our managing director) had become disenchanted with most other ‘networking / business representation groups’ which were too widely focussed and rarely allowed her to meet the right people, be that peers in the IT industry, potential suppliers or high-value customers.

Life after Intellect

Kate recognised early on that one of the best ways to benefit from Intellect was to get involved, and did! She became the youngest-ever main board member of Intellect in 2007, and joined the Energy and Environment Leadership Group, and the Women in IT Forum's management committee. She also frequently attends the SME Advisory council meetings and a selection of business intelligence and networking events.

Intellect has helped us to shift gear from an isolated small business to a company that has a good understanding of what is happening in the industry and is able to compete with much larger competitors on a more equal footing.

Since joining we are now actually considering pulling back from some previous memberships since Intellect is so much more relevant and useful to us than more general purpose networking and representation organisations. Cost is not the driving force behind that decision, but time, and for us time spent interacting with Intellect is almost always a good investment.

What are the specific benefits of being an Intellect member?

Industry Intelligence

Intellect's regular briefings and perspectives on what is happening in the IT industry are very valuable, and have helped us to spot some useful market gaps. For instance, Kate got the idea to move towards IT infrastructure rather than just Web hosting from meetings at Intellect. Additionally, Intellect provides a good source of legislative information and updates, for e.g. their HR service.

Networking

This falls into two parts; on the one hand Intellect events provide an excellent forum for meeting relevant suppliers and potential customers across the whole spectrum of business size. In the case of the latter, we have found this very helpful in terms of allowing us to test product ideas in an informal space and hone our service offerings to appeal to customer groups that we were not previously accessing.

The other part, which has actually been more important, is the opportunity to network with peers; in Kate's case other directors of small, high-growth technology businesses. The experience and insights shared through such encounters have been invaluable, much more so than one of Henley's expensive entrepreneurial leadership training for example!

Influence

Intellect is well recognised as the voice of the IT industry and is highly credible with government. In turn, we genuinely feel that we are heard by Intellect, which is certainly at odds to most other ‘business representation organisations’ we have dealt with in the past.

On our own, our voice would never be heard, but through Intellect we can join ours with many others and effect change. We have been able to contribute to the debate in a number of areas, in many cases being able to directly access top-level decision makers. Examples include RandD tax credits, improving SME access to public sector contracts as well as areas of more personal interest such as lobbying for payment equality for Women in IT.

What would your advice be to non-Intellect members who work in the technology industry?

Join Intellect! In terms of value-for-time you will be greatly rewarded in terms of relevant information and intelligence, expertise, influence and it will greatly enhance your personal network. There is a caveat though; to get real value from Intellect you have to participate. Therefore I would say, ditch your non-IT-specific group memberships, join Intellect, and join it!