Organic Growth Masterclass: DMW Group, backed by Growth Capital Partners

The DMW Group is a digital transformation and IT services business that provides cloud, data and software engineering services. DMW clients include the likes of Google, Burberry, BP, Lloyds of London and a number of large government departments. Growth Capital Partners (GCP) backed the senior leadership team who had led the business for over twenty years. GCP was the first institutional investor in the company.

The management team selected us because they were looking for a partner to help them formalise and build out the company’s next phase of development, accelerate growth and valued GCP’s experience of backing organic-led growth plans in the professional services and technology space.
Maintaining culture

DMW is a talent-driven business, it needed a sponsor that was empathetic to how technology organisations work, how to scale a business without ripping things up and how to practically support company evolution. Alongside management, we collectively developed a formalised, systematic approach to evolving aspects of the company and driving growth, while retaining the things that made it very attractive and an employer of choice in a niche tech area. Culture is hard to quantify, but preserving it won the company a number of Great Place to Work awards during the period we were invested.

Investment in people

When we got involved, it was very much a London-centric business. Over the period of our investment, DMW opened offices in Leeds and Manchester. That meant that we were tapping into some new potential clients and also new pools of talent. Being a people business, we were effectively selling consultants’ time. The way we scaled was through recruitment. We invested in a People Ops function with dedicated in-house recruitment capability. This enabled the business to double headcount.

Expanding service offering

DMW supplies technically capable consultants to enable digital change within businesses. DMW noticed an opportunity for expansion into adjacent service offerings with high growth potential. DMW was working closely on programmes with engineers that weren’t DMW employees but often independent contractors or third-party consultants. This enabled DMW to broaden its service offering through supplying engineering services, which was welcomed by clients, and increased the size of its footprint with existing and new clients.
Under GCP’s period of investment, the firm was able to double revenue to in excess of £30m. The growth and evolution of the business successfully raised its profile with potential buyers and it recently completed an exciting transaction with a US trade buyer.

Organic Growth Masterclass: DMW Group

Organic growth is essential for materially improving a company’s professionalism, geographical reach and product and service offering. Here is a good example of how to achieve organic growth success.