There’s confidence at UK’s Bytesnap
Quite often you hear the cliché – “You are only as good as your people” – and more often than not that is in fact true. However, for a firm such as ByteSnap Design, it’s always true.
ByteSnap is a young UK based company, founded in 2008 by Graeme Wintle and Dunstan Power. Kind of like a “Phoenix from the ashes”.
“We started out after a company that Graeme and myself used to work for went out of business. A lot of people lost their jobs at the same time, but we took the opportunity to set up a new business,” explained Dunstan Power.
And that was the birth of ByteSnap Design, an embedded systems software development and electronics design consultancy.
By setting up at such an opportune time, Graeme and Dustan were able to take on some of the skilled engineers they’d already been working with – in ByteSnap’s first business year. And more importantly, it meant that they had a small team that already knew each other.
Serving both hardware and software – equally
“I’m a hardware engineer and Graeme is a software engineer. Fundamentally we wanted to build a company that was focused on both hardware and software because we knew that other companies were often focused on either one and subcontracted-out the other. From the outset, we’ve always been very keen to say that we have the capabilities to do both,” Mr. Power explained.
Power emphasises that ByteSnap’s expertise in both software and hardware is what makes the consultancy so successful – viewing every project from different angles and with a different set of eyes.
“Even if the job is a software job, the engineers working on it understand the underlying electronics and that’s really important; not only looking at it from a software point of view but taking into consideration the hardware side of things too.”
As companies within other segments might update their capabilities by adding or upgrading machinery, ByteSnap’s true capability is its people.
“The main asset in our consultancy is the high level of skills brought by our employees. And that’s how it is in any consultancy business. You are providing people and their time and you are only as good as those people and how they apply their knowledge and skills.”
Looking to grow
After creating a strong footing in the UK market – ignoring any form of specialised segment and only looking at the project, as such – the company is now set on growing outside of its home base.
ByteSnap currently has about 70% of its clients within the UK, and the remaining 30% stem from North America, Germany, Belgium and Denmark. Now the consultancy is looking to attract more EU business.
“I’d like to get more of the Scandinavian business, but Europe in general. It’s on our doorstep, Europe’s business language tends to be English and I think we’re really cost effective. However, we’re not trying to sell on cost, but we can deliver the high level of service expected,” Mr. Power continued.
“We are growing the business, moving up the food chain so to speak, increasingly working for large scale companies, with large scale project sizes. We’re not changing directions, this is just something that is happening anyway, thanks to ongoing client relationships and recommendations.”
The ongoing economic climate – let’s call it a downturn – put a rather big dent in a large segment of the industry. However, ByteSnap didn’t really feel a thing.
“We had quite a good year – smaller companies can be incredibly busy with a core set of customers providing them with work – even if the market as a whole is depressed.”
On paper, one could say that ByteSnap has some major competition coming from India (the software side of the business) and China. But Dunstan Power is not really worried about that, as the benefits of using a local company are just too great. The ease of communications and control in working with a local consultancy are just two of the most important factors, perhaps explaining why many of ByteSnap’s UK-based clients have been with the consultancy since its inception back in 2008.
Read more: http://evertiq.com/news/32980