Headcount: 68 (+70%)
Specialism: Edtech
HQ: Skelmersdale, Lancashire
Founded in 2006, this schools supplier’s average monthly headcount hiked from 40 to 68 between its fiscal 2020 and 2023.
Counting Microsoft, Sophos, Fujitsu, HP, VMware among its vendor allies, its headcount now stands at 78, the company told us.
The Lancashire-headquartered business also has offices in Batley and Leamington Spa.
Q&A with CEO Simon Steele
What lies behind your lightning growth?
It sounds obvious, but a clear plan. We are not a young company. We were established in 2006 so we have been doing what we are doing for quite some time. If we are honest, we became a little stagnated after 10 years or so – not through a lack of hard work or desire, but just fell into the trap of ‘carrying on’. So, five or so years ago we put ourselves through a process of understanding our business as it was, where we wanted it to be and began building a strategy and plan on how to achieve our goals. Even though we experienced a pandemic in the middle of this period it has been largely successful and we have doubled our revenue and grown quite significantly. Of course, none of this would have been possible without great people, we are, and always have been focussed on a good culture here at Virtue and we continue to put ever more focus on this as the team increases in size. For us the key to building the right culture is only bringing people in that are aligned to your values, this is prioritised over skills and experience.
What do you see as your biggest growth opportunity for the next 12 months?
It could quite possibly be cyber security but we think it will more likely be our Enhanced Support Services. As with a lot of areas of the IT Industry there continues to be a skill shortage within the Education sector which is exaggerated because of the huge increases in salaries over the last few years and the ever-increasing gap with the private sector. There are huge expectations on IT teams within education, they are expected to be knowledgeable and be able to manage all areas of IT from clients through to cyber security which is exceptionally difficult, particularly as most organisations are also embarking on some kind of cloud journey. This is challenging enough for the schools that do have an IT team, it is quite normal for a Primary School to not have one which makes it difficult for them just to understand what they should be doing. We have spent the last couple of years evolving our support offerings to work alongside our customers closely to address these challenges which is naturally moving this part of our business to be more aligned to MSP type services.
