ramsac ranked 38th in this year’s Oxygen Fast-Growth 50 after swelling headcount from 65 to 108 between its fiscal 2021 and 2024.
Find out more about the Fast-Growth 50 here, and view the Fast-Growth 50 2025 hub here.
ramsac Executive Chairman Rob May explains why the cruciferous vegetable is so dear to the Guildford-based IT consultancy’s cause.
How has ramsac consistently expanded headcount in a tough market?
When I looked at last year’s report, quite a lot of that fast growth for many of the businesses was through acquisition and aggregation. We’ve just remained solidly organic. I think that aggregation is good for the likes of ramsac because we’ve picked up customers who are leaving other providers that have become a part of a bigger party.
And probably linked to that is the big focus we have on strong relationships. Our approach is to take customers on a long-term strategic journey, rather than just selling them something.
And then finally, continuing to focus on cybersecurity and – increasingly – AI.
Are you continuing to expand headcount in 2025?
We are recruiting, but I don’t think it will be at the same fast pace we’ve seen in recent years. That shouldn’t be necessary. The reality of what we’re selling as an industry should mean we’re able to do more with the same number of people.
A lot of what we’ve done this [financial] year has been about looking at productivity – in effect how we augment what we do with AI and automation.
The way I talk about AI when I’m keynoting is to think of it as ‘assisted’ rather than ‘artificial’ intelligence. When you change to that mindset and start to look at how to use technology across all roles to do their jobs better and more efficiently – and remove some of the drudgery – people are more receptive to it.
‘Take me to the cauliflower’ is an important phrase for ramsac, and you now even have a ‘cauliflower corridor’. Why is that?
‘Take me to the cauliflower’ came from an unplanned story I gave at one of our all-hands meetings where I was trying to explain customer service. It would be wrong to say I had a masterplan to introduce cauliflowers to the world of IT.
[I was talking about] a customer at a supermarket who’s buying a bottle of wine when they suddenly remember they need… a cauliflower. The cauliflower just popped into my head for some unknown reason.
If you’re in Waitrose and you ask a member of staff where the cauliflowers are, you’re surrounded by Waitrose staff who pick you up and carry you to the fruit & veg aisle, before one of them selects a cauliflower that perfectly matches your wine. In Sainsburys, they might walk you to the end of the aisle and point out that the fruit & veg aisle is the second aisle on the right. And in a budget supermarket they grunt and walk off.
The point is that the customer has asked the same question, but the response they get – the service you get – is all the result of the culture within that supermarket. And the ramsac culture always must be that if someone asks ‘where are the cauliflowers’, we pick them up and take them there.
It’s one of those things that stuck because it’s easy to remember and relate to. There’s a wall of paintings and pictures of cauliflowers people walk past every day and it reminds them – and I think that’s really important.
