At first glance, RSK Business Solutions appears to be the black sheep of the RSK Group environmental consultancy family.
With a service portfolio including software development and technical services outsourcing to India, the company is deliberately forging its own identity while moving in circles its parent would never have dreamed of.
On closer inspection though, RSK Business Solutions is clearly a chip off the old corporate block: compact, lissom, and with its entrepreneurial eyes firmly fixed on the profitable cutting edge.
"We bring the group something different," says RSK Business Solutions director and co-founder Danny Bird.
The company was formed in July last year to prevent the small but promising software arm of RSK Project Services suffocating under the sheer enormity of a contract to support National Grid’s liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal on the isle of Grain.
Since 2005, RSK Project Services has been retained to contort itself into all manner of complex project management shapes to satisfy National Grid’s complex demands.
Software development has always been part of that deal but Bird, together with co-founder and associate director Praveen Joshi, had a hunch the ultimate potential of these services warranted their own business vehicle.
Both gifted, multi-lingual computer programmers, Bird and Joshi were attracted to RSK Project Services by the chance to test their software mettle within a consultancy framework.
By the time RSK Business Solutions was formalised, the duo had already devised a clutch of sophisticated applications, including a web-based sustainability appraisal toolkit for Bovis Lend Lease, and an online timesheet system used by, among others, Network Rail and National Grid.
RSK Business Solutions had also built the customer relationship management system currently enjoyed by RSK Group’s direct sales team (as well as a number of external clients), and an asbestos management system that RSK STATS Environment Health and Safety uses on behalf of clients like the National Trust.
Meanwhile, Bird was presiding over Network Rail’s Signal Overrun Risk Assessment programme, devising software to manage its detailed mathematical and algorithmic aspects, as well as hosting the related risk assessment workshops (these services now fall under the RSK Business Solutions remit).
Within five years, RSK Business Solutions aims to turn over £3 million, while achieving a profit margin of 30–35 per cent.
Constantly innovating"We’re not setting ourselves up to experience massive growth in terms of sales, but rather we’re aiming to constantly innovate while achieving high levels of profit," explains Bird.
Recent projects of note include a commission to develop a new Signal Overrun Risk
Assessment Toolset (SORAT) for Network Rail, and to produce a Network Environmental Risk Tool (NERT) for Total petrol station outlets.
While RSK Business Solutions has a handful of off-the-shelf products to its name, the company mostly stands out for its consultative approach: clients’ problems are precisely pinpointed and remedied with bespoke solutions.
"I’m not aware of many other organisations like ours," says RSK Business Solutions managing director and third and final co-founder David Pratt.
"There are programming houses working under client direction, or management consultants providing advice, but we do it all.
"I’ve had lots of experience of software products that go 90 per cent of the way, but usually it’s that extra 10 per cent that doesn’t do what you want that causes so much frustration. We create exactly what our clients want, 100 per cent, mapped precisely to their business needs."
Outsourcing to India
Key to RSK Business Solutions’s high-profit business strategy is an option to outsource IT related technical services and business processes to its 18-man office in Delhi, India.
Drawing on the talents of a crack team of programmers, web developers, graphics designers and computer experts, client costs can be slashed by up to 80 per cent while still yielding a healthy profit.
"Everyone is looking at prices right now," says Bird.
"While the crunch continues to hit, companies want to lower their costs to survive. Outsourcing is an area in which we see real growth over the next five years."
Beyond cost considerations, RSK Business Solutions’ secret outsourcing weapon is communication.
Project management occurs solely in the UK, and if the client has a question or problem, they can pick up the phone or drop in for a face-to-face meeting, without worries about time difference or language barriers.
Joshi, who was born and bred in India and speaks fluent Hindi, manages the Delhi operation, and visits every three months or so to ensure everything is running to plan.
"Our Indian connection means we can be flexible in order to meet market demand," he says.
"The talent pool in the software industry is very big here and there it is much easier to find resources and ability than it is in the UK."
E-commerce and web shop business ICELAB Ltd is one of a growing number of RSK Business Solutions’ outsourcing converts. Managing director Alan Noake even goes so far as to call his rolling three-month web development service "the first really positive experience" he’s had of this kind of business arrangement.
"I’ve had some bad experiences of outsourcing to India, but the communication with RSK has been excellent," he says.
"The biggest outsourcing fear for somebody like myself is always a fear over communication, but that’s never been an issue, and the quality of work guys that have been doing has been exceptional."
Another recent beneficiary of the Delhi office is RSK Group’s aerial survey and geomatics specialist, RSK Orbital, which has outsourced three months’ worth of mapping data-entry duties.
"A task like that would have probably been done by an associate director," Danny notes.
"We can take care of this kind of structured yet time-consuming and possibly mundane task and let higher fee earners concentrate on doing what they do best."
Despite, or perhaps because of, fragile economic circumstances worldwide, Praveen expects staff numbers in Delhi to double within the year to cope with demand.
"It is very exciting to be growing a business of this kind, and it is a credit to RSK Group for supporting the venture. It really gives us all something to get up for, and we’re determined to make it a success."