Marcus Richards
We create better services, better systems, and a better world through a better approach to digital.
We work with the public and third sector to help them deliver real, tangible results from their investment in digital
Tell us about yourself?
I fell into digital; I studied Sport and Exercise Science at University and had planned on going down that route.
I ended up in roles that all had a degree of contract management in them, and when a role came up where I was working to contract to manage an IT contract, I took it.
This was around the time of iPhones coming out, the cloud being talked about more, and really I could see a huge gap in what IT was delivering as part of a contract – keep the lights on – and what it could be used for in delivering services in a much more efficient way.
I’ve been delivering digital programmes now for the last 13 years.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
To stop judging yourself by the perceived success of others. It can be very lonely running a one man band company and it’s a slow rise to success. Too much of social media is about instant ins or instant gratification but this isn’t the norm, or even true in many cases. It’s a hard and lonely slog.
What problem does your business solve?
There is a stat that 95% of digital transformation programmes fail to achieve their desired outcome. We help businesses to be in the 5% that deliver successful programmes.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Most businesses don’t know how to use digital technology to achieve their business goals. IT has traditionally been about keeping the lights on, and not needing to understand how the business works.
Likewise, most business people don’t really understand digital or IT. The amount of jargon in the industry keeps this divide between departments and the company was really borne out of the desire to bridge the gap between departments.
I work largely with non-technical staff to get them to be more comfortable in talking about technology and understanding they they don’t need to know how it works, just what it can deliver for the business. The majority of my clients are public or third sector organisations, but this hasn’t been by design.
What is your magic sauce?
I focus on what I call Digital Confidence. That might be on a business wide level or an individual level. I have a methodology called Be The Five (back to the 95% failure rate stat) which takes customers through five stages of Discuss, Discover, Decide, Design and Deliver.
It’s a model that can work at all levels and can actually be used for any decision making process.
The methodology is explained din my book Be The Five available on amazon. Most tech companies focus on the tech. I focus on the people first and then the tech follows.
When i leave a company they will have the knowledge and confidence to embrace technology in their business to achieve their goals.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
I’ve recently built some software that helps organsiations to deliver their projects in a more agile way. it uses the Be The Five methodology but in what we call the 5d Agile method. The app is called ditch (from digital and transformational change) and is available on the Salesforce Appexchange.
Over the next five years I’d like to grow the software side of the business building more apps that help companies achieve their business goals. I will still do the consulting work that I’ve always done, but I’d like to focus more on software going forwards.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
I would normally say Covid, but in reality it was really setting up a business and then thinking “ok what now?”. That day one realisation that no-one is paying you at the end of the month is huge and digital and IT is such a wide and varied market it can be find to your place in it.
There were many a sleepless night in the early days. There’s a lot of information about setting up businesses and not paying yourself, but that just doesn’t work in reality.
We all have bills to pay so being able to pay myself, even if a lot less than I earned before, was crucial. I still have doubts today that I’m on the right path, but I think that is part of owning and growing a business.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
There are three ways to engage initially, You can buy my book, Be The Five; Listen to my podcast, Digital Confidence and Decision Making or take the digital confidence scorecard on my website.
Then see what resonates. If you understand me and my methods then working together is much more productive.
