Mark Grogan (Productivity)
All of these successes have culminated into Productivity seeing revenue increase by 10 times from its first to its fifth year of operation, a feat Grogan claims was achieved with little to no marketing, instead using customer service and word of mouth.
However, dealing with a such a small team caused issues for Grogan while the business was in its infancy, especially as it experienced rapid growth in such a short period of time.
For example, when the business added its second technician, there was still no one around to manage finances.
“At one point, we had aged receivables out over a year simply because we didn’t have anyone to chase money – and that was if we remembered to invoice it,” Grogan said.
“We actually had nearly double the money in very aged receivables than cash in the bank at that time. In hindsight, fixing this earlier would have been a huge help as we bobbed along with a positive, but flat level of cash in the bank seemly never getting ahead.
“Once the finance position was created, it was as if we had a huge influx of cashflow in a short period of time and we were able to add two more staff quite quickly helping the growth and that resolved a heap of challenges.”
While the MSP has six employees, Grogan said most of Productivity’s roles are covered, but “there always just seems to be a bottleneck somewhere”.
That being said, the company’s team is happy to pick up other duties typically held by other roles if needed, he added.
From a branding viewpoint, the MSP’s uncommon domain name of .technology, rather than .com.au or .net.au also has proved a challenge.
“We struggle as a lot of places refer to us as Productivity Technology rather than our name, Productivity," Grogan said. “Small issue though, but it means our brand execution just wasn’t 100 per cent as a result.”
Despite the struggle, the founder claims he “really took the MSP scene quite a bit differently” than his competitors.
As to where Grogan will take Productivity from here, he isn’t quite sure on the direction, but whichever way he turns, he knows it will be alongside his team.
The initial plan is to keep growing following the hiring of a marketing coordinator, as he claims Productivity has “saturated” the business opportunities in its current home base, so the MSP will be bolstering its presence in locations where it has just started to put its foot in the door.
“The main thing is to make sure we create a business structure that complements our next stages and ensuring our core value of customer service is never lost as we continue to grow,” he said.
“We are also starting to do more outside the normal MSP space with Microsoft Power Platform and business intelligence. Initially, this is to just offer value-add dashboards to our clients for simple things like monthly tickets and Microsoft CSP licensing.
“Realistically though, I kicked the whole thing off without even a documented business plan, just an idea. I know that’s getting to be an issue, but my team keep me grounded to make sure we are all heading in the same direction," he added.
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