9X5 Consulting mixed hardware sales and digital transformation to debut in Fast50

9X5 Consulting has trodden an unconventional path on the way to becoming a digital transformation specialist.

Founded just before the pandemic, the Melbourne-headquartered firm was soon forced to sell PC's and peripherals that today still account for 10 per cent of its revenue.

9X5 has since grown to a nationwide team of 67 that delivers hardware, software and professional services to such brands as Paspaley, La Trobe Financial, Yum Foods and Ports Victoria.

Professional services made up the bulk of revenue in the 2022-23 financial year, including everything from the provision of business analysts and project managers to developers and UX testers.

This mix of services saw the consultancy more than double its revenue to $8.8 million in FY22-23.

We spoke with 9X5’s head of sales and marketing Michael Williamson about the firm’s origins and growth.

“[9X5 founder and CEO Matthew Willie] was really wanting to build very much a client-focused professional services business...that could help Australian firms embrace digital transformation and innovation,” Williamson said.

“Unfortunately COVID hit, everyone was in lockdown, so the business very rapidly had to pivot; so there's probably some things we do that the average consulting company doesn't do.”

“We sell hardware, for example. That was born out of…if you remember at the time, there was a chip shortage, plus they had COVID lockdowns and everybody trying to scramble to get laptops and things like that.”

“As a legacy of that we've got some clients and we look after their hardware; we look after giving them BAs and developers as well, and we represent 90 per cent of their headcount in IT, which is pretty crazy for a consulting firm.” The bulk of the firm’s work is professional services.

The company also has some clients that have generated a lot of digital transformation work.

“Part of our business is dedicated to data analytics. We’ve got two products; one is Analytics 360 and one is Education 360…that’s geared towards schools and universities."

“That’s all built on top of Domo; so we’re actually Domo’s biggest integration partner in Australia.”

“We’ve invested very heavily in that over the last couple of years, so that’s starting to bear fruit.”

A huge win for 9X5 in the last financial year was its work with Paspaley.

“We’ve been there from the early days in an advisory capacity for those sorts of businesses, and obviously that then leads to a fair bit of work downstream,” Williamson said.

“In the case of Paspaley, I think there are about 33 sub-businesses under that group; it's a very challenging environment, and so we work hand in glove with their CIO or CTO to figure out what they're working on.”

“With Paspaley being based in Darwin, we've started a new line of business called MyBuy, which we run for them, which is effectively pre-provisioning of hardware, and we're looking at rolling that out to several other clients.”

“It's a very effective service that we can offer particularly for clients who are regional, so they might struggle to get hardware on sites.”

“We're looking at doing it for a couple of miners for some of their remote sites and another client in Tasmania that we’re in negotiations with.”

According to Williamson, maintaining close relationships with clients has helped 9X5 stand out from other consultancies.

“With Latrobe as well, we've got a lot of developers in there and that's borne by the fact that we've got a very close working relationship with our clients compared to other consultants,” he said.

“We've taken a very different approach where myself or Matt [Willie] still go out and meet clients every week; we're still very much client focused.”

“It's a pretty competitive environment, so we want to stay on top of the challenges that our clients are [experiencing], but also maintain those personal relationships; that’s probably our biggest strength so far.”

9X5 Consulting’s 2023 Fast50 entry also mentioned partnerships with Zoho, ManageEngine and Bluechip. The company complimented Bluechip for its technical support, leads and help with tender responses.

Half a million on office fit-out

In the 2023 financial year, 9X5 opened a Sydney office and now has staff across Australia.

“Probably the biggest challenges we’ve had are your traditional growing pains sort of stuff; it’s easy to manage a team out of one office, [but] we now have staff in four different states,” Williamson said.

“Our professional services grew dramatically. We’ve got 50 consultants now where two years ago we probably had three.”

“That brings with it challenges; processes that work when you've got a small team tend not to work when you’ve got a big team.”

“We've invested quite heavily in our training, we've invested quite heavily in our processes, CRMs, all that of our back-end systems, that's probably been the biggest challenge as we're growing in head office.”

“Matt has worked at a lot of consulting companies and so have I…so we know what consultants want out of a head office, and we invested quite heavily in our office…half a million dollars for a fit out to make sure all our staff have great workstations, great meeting spaces, even down to great kitchen breakout areas.”

“It's very easy for consultants to get stuck in the trenches on a client site and never come back to head office; we've tried to create an environment where they do come back.”

Acquisition on the agenda

Building its team and capabilities via an acquisition is next on the list for 9X5.

“We're in discussions with a couple of companies at the moment with a view to acquire,” Williamson said.

“…the acquisition has to meet three criteria; one is it has to bring us a little bit of bulk.”

“We're still small, so we want to grow and grow our headcount, but we’re also looking for things in different geographic locations; it's often faster to buy than to build when you're trying to move interstate.”

“They also have to bring a new technical capability into the business that we haven't already got.”

“We're in talks with a company at the moment [and I think] in the next 12 to 18 months some acquisition will occur.”