MSP Littlefish nets over 220 new staff due to pandemic demand

Nottingham-based MSP sees revenues more than double to £28m in the last two years

Nottingham-based Littlefish has taken on 228 employees due to increased demand amid the pandemic, according to its sales and marketing director.

The MSP - which counts Microsoft, Cisco and HPE among its vendor partners - last year intended to add 150 new people to its workforce pool when it opened a new service centre in Sheffield, but sales and marketing director Mark Petty said that it had to increase its headcount further due to customer demand for its services caused by the pandemic.

"We've seen demand from existing customers plus there's some COVID demand, but, by and large, it's been because we've continued to take market share, bring in new logos, new customers and the customers that we're bringing on are just getting bigger and bigger," he told CRN.

"We always forecast for success but our win ratios have been improving and we brought on more clients, and as a result of that we've needed additional heads to furnish them.

"We've also seen really good cybersecurity growth as well, so those two combined have taken us now to 425 heads, compared to just over 200 heads at the start of the last financial year."

The area that has grown the most for Littlefish has been its service desk and end user compute services, which is where the majority of the new staff have been recruited to, in roles such as service desk agents, engineers and at its in-house SOC in Nottingham.

The increased headcount correlates with the revenue growth the MSP has seen in the last couple of years, Petty added. It took on a minority investment from private equity house LDC in 2018 and has since seen its revenue jump from £12.6m in its FY18 to £18m in FY19, according to reports filed on Companies House. The business now claims to have hit £28m in its recently finished FY20.

Petty anticipates this number increasing from continued organic growth and "word of mouth" referrals from current customers but has not ruled out acquisitions as a means of driving growth.

"We know our service proposition is resonating in a target market that's maturing and wanting to move away from monolithic outsourcers to more niche service providers, and we very much class ourselves as a niche end user service provider," he stated.

"We'd expect to still see multimillion-pound growth and substantial double figures in the new financial year. We are looking to see if there are suitable acquisitions in the markets to make Littlefish both a bigger organisation with even greater EBITDA and profitability, but also looking to broaden our portfolio."

Littlefish has its headquarters in Nottingham, as well as offices in Sheffield and London. Petty said that though those locations still have plenty of space to be filled, he's not ruling out further expansion within the UK.

"We'll continue to look at acquisitions, and that could give us more locations inside of the UK," he reiterated.

"We haven't specifically picked out a location for another new office because we still have scope in Sheffield to fill space there, but acquisitions can bring additional territories.

"If we were to successfully achieve the goals we set ourselves for this new year, then that could mean either additional office space in current locations or looking at other locations."

Petty said that Littlefish intends to make a big splash over the next 12 months in terms of market awareness and seizing the opportunity while competitors "remain quiet".

"Whenever you look at recessions and times of financial scarcity, marketing budgets tend to get cut first," he said.

"We've made a concerted effort that whilst a lot of the market is going to be quiet, or quieter, we've enhanced our marketing spend significantly.

"This is to try and make sure that we grow the brand and the reputation of Littlefish and grow the awareness of ourselves inside of the commercial and public sector markets at a time when there won't be a lot of investment from people in raising their brand profiles, so we're hoping to do that while others are quiet."