The last word: Rory McKeand

Congratulations on the management buyout. Can you tell us a little about the factors behind the move?

It was a natural cycle across two fronts. David Stonehouse, who founded TSG with Sir Graham Wylie in 2003, and later became executive chair, was looking to retire at the end of a five-year plan.

Alongside that, we had formed an ambitious management team that was ready to take the company forward, and were seeking investment to do so.

The transaction – completed with multi-million pound investment from Pictet Alternative Advisors – represents fantastic news for all associated with TSG.

The announcement came with stated ambitions to “accelerate organic growth and seek opportunities for future strategic acquisitions”.

How will you roll out such plans?

We’re focused on building our capabilities.

We already provide a lot of value-added services; our TSG Academy, for example, which we launched last year to support clients’ teams learning and development around the technologies we provide, is now working with more than 2000 learners from more than 380 clients, and has capacity to accommodate 100,000 learners.

It is a great example of how we really understand the market.

Through a mixture of online and in-person events, we provide solutions – like highlighting the many benefits of Microsoft 365 operations – that provide clients with better value for money through predictable spend and return on investment.

And we have another dozen value-added services we’re looking at introducing following the buyout.

Furthermore, we’re looking for smaller – but high-quality – businesses that provide managed services or are Microsoft Solutions partners, where we can offer a really good home for people and clients.

The deal will also increase both employment and turnover.

We have a four-year plan through which we hope to increase headcount from its current 260 mark to more than 400 nationally – including our North East headquarters, where we have around 60 people – and take turnover from about £40 million to more than £100 million.

A unique factor in that growth will be our new employee benefit trust, which means every employee is now a shareholder of TSG.

We are the only Microsoft Solutions partner to operate such a model, and it means everyone has a sense of ownership, which will make a big difference going forward.

The technological world is constantly evolving.

What do you anticipate as being the next big change across the digital landscape – and how is TSG placed to support its delivery?

There is a significant gap at the moment between the speed of innovation and the speed of adoption.

We’ve structured ourselves to help companies increase implementation through our training and customer success models.

Clients have to be careful with their budgets, they need a return on investment, and we’re very well placed to help them do that.

We also have well established client success models, with our client success managers providing valuable user adoption support.

Thanks to our status as a trusted advisor, and our string of existing and planned value-added services, we are in a very strong position.