Features from Meantime IT

10 things we’ve learnt about business

When we started operating 10 years ago we had little more than a laptop and a phone line. We did, however, have a plan. We’d become weary of seeing IT being done badly and we committed to prove that it could be done on time, on spec and on budget. We’re incredibly proud to say that we’ve achieved all those things.

We’ve learnt much more along the way. The commitment we made 10 years ago remains at the core of everything we do, but we’ve developed a few more business practices that make us who we are. We hope you agree that the way we work works.
Small lightbulbs, equals sign then large lightbulb

Getting the right team

It might seem like we’re stating the obvious here, but building the right team has been essential. People may have all the right qualities on paper, but put them in the office or a client situation and sometimes it doesn’t always gel. Not necessarily in a way that work would suffer; just in a way that doesn’t feel quite right. Everyone who works here is the best in their field; we insist on excellence, but we also rely heavily on instinct.

Investing in talent

When we started to grow we needed people who knew what they were doing. We’ve got an excellent team of experienced people, so now we want to start from the bottom up. Investing in our future means training apprentices, and our first foray into nurturing talent has been a phenomenal success. When Jack was still an apprentice, he learned from the best and rewarded us by becoming a talented and intuitive developer.

Giving the team the tools they need to perform at their best

Operating systemsEveryone has different ways of working. As a business, we need policies and procedures but there are some areas where flexibility is key. Some people like working on Macs, others PCs. We have iPad fans and we have people who would never darken Apple’s door. We accommodate people’s preferences and supply them with the equipment and working practices that will enable them to work at their best. We don’t want to make Paul use a PC knowing he’ll be much more efficient on a Mac. We don’t want to insist Lou makes a 200 mile round trip every day, knowing that she’ll produce more work in her home office. Give your staff what they need, and they’ll return the favour with increased productivity. They’ll also be much happier, and that’s a pretty good reason in our eyes.

Prioritising policies and procedures

We’re flexible with the team, but we’re sticklers for systems. We’re not creating needless bureaucratic headaches for people who already have enough to do but we are ensuring that anyone can walk in and pick up where someone else left off. As bespoke business software developers we obviously have our own business software, and our mPire system has grown with our little empire. What started as a simple tracking tool is now a feature-rich project management system which clients can access to check their own projects. We know it works, but just to make sure everyone else does we’re in the process of making it official with the ISO 27001 accreditation for data management and security and the ISO9000 for business processes.

Never skipping on specs

The nature of our business means we require a detailed spec before any practical work is carried out. Unfortunately, not all software developers agree with us here and that’s why so many IT projects fail or run over budget. When we take on a project we analyse it from the bottom up, speaking to the people who will be using the system to find out how they work and how we can improve their processes. After all, if our systems don’t create time and money efficiencies, there’s not a lot of point in having them. So we take the time to get to know the business and as well as having detailed discussions with the MD, we speak to the staff who’ll be using the software every day. Only when we have a complete picture of how the business works and what they want from their software will we move on from the spec and start creating exactly what they need.

Knowing when to say no

A major part of managing projects is knowing exactly what we can, can’t or don’t want to do. We’ve been asked to build systems that we know will never work; we’ve said so and walked away. We’re honest with our clients about what they can expect, and if they need less than they’re asking for we’ll tell them. We want to provide systems that help people to work more efficiently, and we’re completely honest about how that can be achieved.

Making sure communication is a two way stream

EmailsWe may be appointed for our expertise, but we don’t preach about it. We work in partnership with our clients; we don’t tell them what to do. They tell us what they want and then we advise, we listen and we discuss. We’re accessible to our clients: they know our names, they know who’s doing what and they know why. Unless, of course, they don’t want to know why. Some of our clients want to get on with their work while we get on with ours, and that’s good too. As long as we all know what each other wants and make sure it’s delivered.

Making sure we charge what we’re worth

We all have to start somewhere, and unless you’re an Eton old boy with a family name and a trust fund, that somewhere is at the bottom. This is, clearly, fine. It’s necessary. But we knew that if we wanted to be working with the blue chips, we had to prove that we were worthy. We always knew we were good; that’s why we created Meantime. We saw so many IT companies that weren’t good and we knew we could do better, so we put our money where our mouths were. That was 10 years ago, and we’re even better now than we were then and we’re not scared of admitting it. Giving out discounts to get contracts undervalues what you do as a business and it chokes your ability to expand. We know our quote won’t be the cheapest, but buy budget, buy twice. Buy Meantime, get it right first time.

Keeping our house in order

Do unto others as you would be done by. Pay your bills on time, keep your promises, be someone people can rely on. We all get frustrated with that one person or business who’s always making excuses about why they haven’t paid your invoice and we approach with caution. Similarly, there’s always the one who’s late for every single meeting and we start to feel a little bit resentful at the precious minutes we waste sitting with our coffee looking at our watch and tapping our fingers on the table. These impressions stick, and we definitely don’t want people to think that way about us. We want people to know that we’re reliable, dependable and do what we say we’ll do. That’s what we expect from other people, and other people should expect nothing less from us.

Not being afraid to be small

The only difference between a good small company and a good large company is the number of people in it. Big businesses can be run badly, small business can be run well and vice versa. Size doesn’t matter, quality is better than quantity and unlike the larger of the IT companies, we’ve never been in the news for going £1 billion over budget. We have, however, managed to compete successfully against those companies simply by doing things properly, being good at what we do and delivering on our promises. We’re specialists, not jacks of all trades. We don’t claim to be the biggest IT company in the world, but we would like to be the best.