entrepreneurs 21
Pictures by Angus Thomas
pretty much double every quarter at the moment, so we’re growing very quickly.
How would you account for the success of Centrix so far?
We have got an amazing team of people. One of our core skills is how to attract, recruit, mentor and grow very talented people. It is an enormously challenging environment and we attract people who absolutely thrive on challenge, they are motivated, open, collaborative, very innovative and tenacious, and I think that we really look after them once they’re here. I am very passionate about Centrix, I love doing it, it’s something that I really believe in and I guess those guys share my passion and drive, it’s infectious. And then I also shouldn’t underestimate just the power of how good our product is. Fundamentally, we are absolutely passionate techies here, so, for us, what expansion tells us is that people in companies across Asia,
across the US and across Europe are using our software and they’re getting value from it – we get such a buzz out of that.
How does your software benefit companies?
Our software is great from a savings perspective – specifically it saves around $400 for every single person in a company per year. For example, Centrica saved £10m using the software. Another really great thing it does is to enable companies to be really flexible with their workforce: if you are one of those members of the workforce you can go to your work homepage, log in, and there are all of your applications from work, all of your content, all in one place, and it works as well on your phone or iPad as it does on your PC or Mac at home. You can work as you want to – you can work flexibly, you can work from home, you can be mobile, you can work from anywhere and it’s really easy to get at your company resources. Also, most of the technology that companies have to use today, especially if they’re large and established, sits on their premises – they’d love to consume a whole load of services from the cloud but it’s actually quite hard for them to do, they can’t simply move everything out to the cloud: one of the things that our technology does is to help them completely seamlessly bridge those two worlds, so they can make the best use of what they’ve got but they can get it in a mobile way and take the opportunities that cloud gives them. It’s all about agility and flexibility for the companies and they save money along the way.
You saved Centrica £10m – if you had a sudden £10m windfall, how would you spend it?
I would put it back into Centrix – I would grow the company even faster than we’re doing now.
What is your greatest business achievement?
Building Centrix Software and the team we’ve got here, and our product, definitely. It has been
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2012
www.businessmag.co.uk
a challenging, frustrating, rewarding, absorbing, thrilling journey, like anything that’s worth doing. It has been hugely challenging, and still is, we have different challenges every day.
Would you consider yourself an entrepreneur? Do you have other new business ideas in you?
I’ve got loads of ideas. I can’t imagine working for somebody else. My personal trainer and I started our own gym, because she was frustrated where she was working, I liked working out with her and we knew we could create a special place. This comes back to just doing it – there’s nothing stopping you from doing it so you can just do it. Do I consider myself an entrepreneur? I don’t call myself that but I’m not remotely scared of starting a business, I think it’s a great thing to do.
If you couldn’t get to work for half a day what would you do?
I do a lot of things, I learned to fly, I go riding, I go sailing, I ski, I have quite a busy life. As a person I get huge motivation from my kids. My number one priority in life is my kids. I like to be a good example for them, and it’s motivating from an energy perspective – I just have a lot of energy. I am pretty driven, that’s for sure. I have quite a rich and varied home life that I find really supportive and really rewarding, and then I have work which is a passion for me, and so I then also feel fulfilled. I think I’m a very lucky person.
Details:
www.centrixsoftware.com
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