DMSG (Cardiff)

Origins

The motivation for starting the business was ultimately based on making a difference within public sector and central government. With more than 20 years’ in the IT services industry, Paul Matthews recognised that as the UK slowly moved out of recession, digital transformation needed to be at the top of the agenda. Recognising that technology is now the enabler of businesses, DMSG identified a need in the market for a service that combined end user needs with technology developments, whilst retaining the interest of the organisation and its sustainability. This was well timed following the government announcement to make a concerted effort to work with SMEs, achieving 25 per cent of its IT spend. At the same time, public sector was going through a process of contract disaggregation from the larger SIs, creating an opportunity to access a level of work that was not there previously. The government procurement also created the G Cloud & DOS framework, and Tech services 2 under the Digital Marketplace for Crown Commercial services. As with any young business, there were several challenges faced as DMSG tried to juggle client delivery, recruitment, company culture and business development. For the directors, the key challenges have been a blend of all of these at different points in the journey and in the early days before they built the core team, time management and trying to do the job of multiples was a huge challenge.

Success Factor

The success of the business to date is very much attributed to the great team of people that DMSG has within the business. It opened an office in Cardiff and made it a key objective to recruit locally. Having gradually built the team, it has put in place an incentive share option scheme for key employees to ensure that they benefit from their hard work in the future. Also, DMSG was very successful in securing a key project within the DVLA in Swansea, which provided it with the opportunity it needed to demonstrate its service. Although the first project was small with just four resources, by delivering this ahead of schedule and exceeding client expectations, it has gone on to be a key DVLA supplier. At the height of projects within the DVLA, it built a team of thirty people to support the delivery of the governments first successful major contract exit. The work in the DVLA helped to build key case studies that has been the stepping stone to further success with GDS, Cabinet Office, Defra and many more. Finally, the key to success and sustainable growth in any business is innovation and over the last two years, DMSG has recognised further gaps in the IT industry, bringing together tech and people solutions to offer a unique group of products and services to enable successful change management. It now has a skills augmentation service, offering tech talent on demand, as well as a talent management service, Talentbe, that provided organisations with the education they need to grow and retain their talent

The Future

The short to medium plan is to consolidate services offering under one company and to support sustainable growth, DMSG will be building its London presence and widening its geographical roots in Manchester with fully manned offices in both locations. It now has a solid base of service offerings and offers a unique blend of technical and people expertise. Its concentration for the next three to five years is to increase its client base and whilst DMSG have been heavily invested in the public sector, its immediate focus is transitioning its service offering to the private sector and the medium enterprise market whilst maintaining existing relationships and increase penetration through innovation and partnership offering.