How The Missing Link broke its revenue record while dealing with the pandemic

Alex Gambotto (The Missing Link)

In July, The Missing Link CEO and co-owner Alex Gambotto took to LinkedIn to announce that the company had achieved a 24-year revenue record in the 2021 financial year, despite the impact of the ongoing pandemic, or perhaps because of it. 

Gambotto, an ARN Hall of Fame inductee, publicly shared the news of the privately-owned Sydney-based IT service provider’s record year largely as a way to congratulate and thank the company’s staff, customers, vendors and distributors. But record-making seems to have become a regular occurrence for the company.  

As it turns out, FY21 was the fifth year in a row that The Missing Link had broken its previous respective revenue records. 

However, this doesn’t mean the latest achievement should be diminished, arriving, as it did, after a full year of disruption stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As Gambotto told ARN, FY21 was no walk in the park.  

“The last financial year was one of the toughest in our 24-year history, with the pandemic raising several unique challenges, including global supply chain disruptions and remote working,” he said.

With the company once again breaking its historical revenue record, Gambotto said he was particularly thankful to clients and partners for their continued support and engagement. 

While many IT service providers have actually seen business ramp up since the pandemic began to make waves across the local market, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for everyone.  

From Gambotto’s perspective, a big part of the company’s ongoing success regardless of the challenges comes from the mix of services it provides  

“We are relatively unique in Australia with specialist divisions in IT and cloud, cyber security and robotic process automation,” Gambotto said. “The addition of the divisions ensures we continue to offer our clients complete IT solutions from start to finish and deliver on our goal of helping businesses achieve more by transforming their IT.” 

While the company’s cyber security division has been growing rapidly for years, its robotic process automation (RPA) division was launched in late 2019, with Gambotto suggesting at the time that RPA tech would be the next big thing to impact businesses. 

While the company experienced growth across all three of its divisions in FY21, the greatest percentage of that growth came from the managed services business.  

“[This came] as businesses looked to consolidate costs, increase reliability, implement 24x7x365 monitoring and support, carry out proactive IT planning and stay on top of new technologies,” Gambotto said.  

Despite enjoying a relatively successful 18 months, the pandemic stagnated The Missing Link’s growth to some degree due its disruption of business transformation projects among many of the company’s clients.  

“I firmly believe we would’ve experienced a more significant growth trajectory if we weren’t facing the unique challenges of the pandemic,” said Gambotto.

However, the pandemic has clearly highlighted plenty of other areas of opportunity, from Gambotto’s perspective, including reinforcing the relevance of having reliable infrastructure, a solid business continuity plan and continually improving security posture.  

“As businesses shifted to a modern workplace, there was an immediate demand for robust remote access solutions, including video conferencing and collaboration platforms. Our cyber security division also experienced a solid growth curve in response to our clients expanding attack surfaces,” he said.  

Unlike many organisations across other segments of the broader market, The Missing Link has not needed to turn to redundancies to stay afloat during the pandemic – in fact, the company has grown.  

Despite initial concerns, the provider’s clients kept it even busier in FY21 than the year before, allowing it to grow its headcount by over 30 per cent. 

“The past 18 months really show you what kind of a team you have and what you can achieve when you stick together through an uncertain time,” Gambotto said. “Despite the challenges, every year, we continue to grow and innovate our capabilities.” 

The bumper year comes as The Missing Link expands overseas, with the company launching a new security-focused office in London earlier this year.  

The company initially staked its claim on the British security market by hiring two local sales representatives and cementing several customer deals in the market.  

“With the recent launch of our office in London, we’re excited about the challenge that a new geography and market will bring,” Gambotto said. “We will also be focusing on our automation division as our clients continue to look for ways to enhance their productivity and processes. 

“I do not doubt that FY2022 will be our greatest as we keep doing what we do best; help businesses achieve their goals with the right solutions and services,” he said.