Xperience Group CEO: 'We're on course for £40m by 2025'

CRN caught up with Iain O'Kane to hear what’s changing in the business and how the gap between MSP services and business applications is narrowing

Xperience Group is pushing for £33m turnover this year, chasing £40m by 2025 further down the line.

In 2022 the Lisburn, Northern Ireland-HQ company secured private equity investment from Bowmark Capital.

Now around 15 months into that investment the group completed the acquisition of GCC in January, bringing the business to a point where it's pushing an excess of £30m turnover with a headcount of 240.

Xperience Group CEO Iain O'Kane tells CRN he believes the services outfit is now reaching its potential.

"I previously had a strategy of having £25m turnover by 2023. But out of the corner of my eye I could see £40m by 2025.

"Given where we are now I think we're going to push £33m in turnover this year. So we're not far off that £40m by 2025."

He bills Xperience as a strategic single source supplier to the SME community with three main pillars to the business.

"Managed IT and infrastructure, whether that be closed, public or private. We then have a business applications offering which is our ERP, CRM, data, power platform. And then thirdly, we've got cybersecurity which is our pen testing and SOC services to our clients," O'Kane explains.

"The premise of our business is that because the lines are becoming blurred as to where solutions are found from, or indeed where problems occur, it's very difficult for SMEs to have multiple vendors.

"Therefore Xperience owns that technology journey with the client. And we think that that's a very compelling offering."

As a solutions provider and MSP, Xperience offers a range of services.

However, O'Kane reveals there is a change in the wind with what's more in demand.

"The split of our business is that we provide more MSP services than we do business applications, however, that gap is narrowing.

"Right now we're maybe 70/30 MSP Vs biz apps. But I can see that going to 60/40."

Business productivity driving biz apps growth

Explaining this growth, he says business challenges are more around productivity, therefore customers are turning to technology more.

"As a business we are migrating our clients from on-premise installations to cloud-based infrastructures, whether that be public or private.

"Once the client has made that migration to the cloud, you then go into what I would call ‘maintenance mode' where you're maintaining and supporting their users, because the infrastructure's quite embedded.

"Therefore, once that's done, the problems clients are trying to solve relate to business apps and business productivity.

"And therefore they're coming to us more for the solution to business challenges and line of business problems. Because whether they're in Azure or they're in private cloud, the servers are in our datacentres.

"We look after them on a regular basis. There's not much more you can do to that infrastructure. Because business challenges are around productivity and trying to streamline their own processes, they're looking to technology more to gain those efficiencies.

"Therefore it seems natural biz apps will grow more.

"We're still seeing double-digit organic growth in our MSP business. But we're seeing greater product attachment in biz apps."

People power - 300 staff by FY25

Besides its ambition to hit £33m turnover this year, O'Kane outlines his other goals for 2024.

"Looking after our clients. Therefore, achieving our financial targets by a good mix of new logo acquisition.

"Having a really low client attrition will help as well. We currently enjoy sub five per cent client attrition and that's a good metric on clients receiving good service and outcomes.

"On the people side, our staff turnover is sub ten per cent. Maintaining those levels of staff retention is a good thing for me because it shows we're investing in our people and they're happy.

"Turnover is great. Operational efficiency leads to a well run business. But to me I'm proud of our low staff turnover.

"We're at 240 people now. I think we'll go into FY25 at over 300 people."

Public vs private cloud

As an MSP what's becoming more current is this public vs private cloud debate, O'Kane says.

Public cloud and clients ability to control costs is becoming a major topic.

"We offer both. Private is a debate that continues to rage. Although people talk about hybrid and hybrid is exactly that. You could have public, private, or on-prem.

"I think we're seeing a little bit of a cycle where there was a race to public. We try to be agnostic and figure out what problem we're trying to solve before we lead with a particular technology, and that goes across the business."

O'Kane adds that the challenge of resourcing and the retention and attraction of quality resources is not MSP specific and will "never go away."

"We have invested very heavily in our cyber people function. I think the work we do with our own talent, attraction and retention is evidenced by our low staff turnover figures.

"We spend a huge amount of time educating our clients on cyber and the need for having a good cyber posture.

"However, I think we're still very much in an educational phase where a lot of businesses don't believe that they would fall foul of a cyber attack.

"Therefore, the adoption of regular pen testing or recurring SOC services continues to be a challenge because it can be expensive, and therefore there's reluctance for clients to take on additional spend."