Meet the Microsoft partner that's gone from zero to £15m turnover in three years without any sales staff

Former ANS and Ideal exec Jo Feldman opens up on new chapter with UBDS

Digital transformation firm UBDS is gunning for 30 per cent year-on-year revenue growth and is eyeing acquisitions after building up the business from zero to £15m in revenue over the last three years.

Based in London and with a 24x7 security operations centre in Manchester, the Microsoft and VMware partner claims to have boosted revenues from nothing to £15 over the last three years without employing any sales staff.

Former ANS Group and Ideal exec Jo Feldman joined UBDS at the beginning of the year as chief commercial officer to build out a commercial team within the business.

Before then, UBDS went from zero to 100 staff over three years, focusing on hiring technically abled staff instead of sales and marketing heads.

The business prides itself on being one of the UK's most highly accredited Microsoft partners and the only partner globally to have VMware's master services competency for its SD-WAN solution.

"The first two and a half years we had no salespeople at all," Feldman said. "It served us well; we've got an amazing reputation for technical excellence and delivery capability - on time and on budget, or ahead of time and ahead of budget - and getting it right the first time. News spreads - we got a lot of our business just by being great and getting referrals."

The firm's business is split into five areas: digital advisory, cloud transformation, data analytics and automation and cloud managed services.

It has customers in both the private and public sector and has over 55 listings on G Cloud 13, Feldman claims, serving central government, local regional government, policing, higher education and financial services customers.

Feldman said UBDS is looking to hit 30 per cent organic growth year-on-year and is also interested in making acquisitions to grow its customer base, acquire talent or add new accreditations or capability.

"Due to our success, we've been able to grow without anty external funding and are 100 per cent privately owned. We're involved in a few discussions - some more mature than others."

"We've got an amazing track record," he added. "What do people want? They want to feel safe in the knowledge that their transformation outcomes are being achieved on time and on budget and we have an amazing track record of doing just that."