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It’s an exciting time to be at Tecala. Our pioneering work as a Managed Service Provider (MSP) has led to rapid growth during the last decade and we’re set for a massive year in 2020.
From our beginnings nearly 20 years ago, we’ve grown to become one of Australia’s largest independent MSPs with some 100 people in offices around the country.
We caught up with Tecala Founder and Managing Director, Pieter DeGunst, to find out exactly what it takes to thrive in today’s globalised and increasingly competitive IT arena. What drives him to succeed amid multinational competition? It’s all about relationships and shared success.
“In the early days we thrived on client referrals and, as a result, kept growing strong,” DeGunst said. “As we grew, we had a decision to make: either do traditional SI and project-based work, or aspire to build relationships as a true technology partner to extend our services and capabilities. That was a real turning point.”
Carving out a new model in MSP delivery allowed us to focus on the client’s business and what they were trying to achieve. We could look at their growth plans and help achieve their objectives, which was key to our growth.
As the years went by, we continued to build up a managed service practice followed by a cloud practice, which is the fastest growing area of our business. Not to mention network services, which has also doubled in size.
We’ve had strong and constant growth quarter-on-quarter for the past five years and realised consistent annuity growth, which has provided stability and enabled us to invest in innovation.
“We’ve grown to now be over 100 people around Australia, and that was achieved by not following the crowd with an off-shoring model, which although offers benefits in terms of cost efficiencies, to us meant compromising our key differentiator – the quality of our customer services. We would rather foster local skills and develop people around the country,” DeGunst said.
The incremental upside of this policy is that we are able to tightly control the quality of our service delivery.
The new decade has started with a bang. With our expansion, we’ve made two big moves into new Sydney and Melbourne office locations, rebranded, and built a new website. Which we feel truly reflects our brand personality and expertise.
We are ready to go to market as a tier-1 MSP this year, and forging partnerships with our mid-market client base.
2020 is the year when automation will continue to drive changes in core service management platforms. We are taking on automation to improve delivery speed and reduce our cost to service customers.
And we intend to turn our automation focus to clients and look at ways to help them automate to drive productivity and efficiency gains.
A decade ago, Tecala was a pioneer in the MSP space and we helped clients adopt that model, which has many benefits compared with managing everything in-house or outsourcing everything to a legacy SI.
“We continue to see organisations move to the MSP model and expand the scope of what they are doing as it helps drive productivity and delivers a faster path to value,” DeGunst said. “Clients get access to world-class expertise and now understand the benefits of the MSP model, which allows them to focus more on the business. It is both strategic and operational.”
Large SIs are slow to innovate, and small IT service providers lack scale and often just keep the lights on with a “when it breaks, I will fix it” approach with basic tooling.
The MSP model has raised the bar in terms of what customers should expect from their IT service providers, but we’re not done innovating yet.
“We see a future of continued growth and we will continue to support our clients as a true technology service partner that delivers strategic business goals,” according to DeGunst.
“Managed services alone is not enough to meet the changing needs of clients as they become more sophisticated and demanding in their technology requirements. This includes more data processing, cyber resilience and automation. Those are defining characteristics of technology partner which can meet a broad range of requirements.”
We are now starting to drive towards being a technology service provider or “MSP++”.
Sound like something you’d like to be a part of? We’re always on the lookout for new talent, so please get in touch.
Organisations can ensure they are engaged with an MSP that is most suitable for their requirements by performing a thorough capability checklist, including how well they perform IT service management and whether they are agile in response to your changing business.
Ready to accelerate your strategic IT brilliance? Get in touch to book your free technology capabilities assessment today.
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