Acquiring Microsoft data services specialist helped Fast50 firm Invise grow sales by 168%

A focus on skill-sharing partnerships and a business acquisition helped catapult infrastructure and security specialist Invise to fourth place in its CRN Fast50 debut in 2023.

In the 2023 financial year, the firm teamed up with the likes of Data#3 and Datacom to service mutual clients.

It also acquired fellow Brisbane-based firm Data Lync. That provided the data capabilities to launch a new service offering, which led to wins with National Transport Insurance, Cross River Rail Authority and community services and aged care clients.

Invise also racked up hybrid infrastructure clients including Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General, Brisbane Girls Grammar School, RACQ and Port of Brisbane

All this saw the firm’s revenue grow 168 per cent to $7 million in the 2023 financial year.

We spoke to Invise’s managing director Damien Harrison about the business’s growth. He said it was driven by two focus areas.

“One was the Microsoft CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) business. We were doing a lot in Microsoft services and a lot of our customers were directing a lot of the queries around licensing and other elements to us,” said Harrison.

“We decided it was time to be able to offer them something in that area. For that we partnered with Lenovo to provide those CSP services and it's been very successful for us.”

“The other part was we brought on board an organisation called Data Lync, a like-minded organisation here in the local market.”

“They were focused in another area that we didn't play in, which was the app integration and data services space.”

The Data Lync acquisition resulted in Invise launching a data services offering built on the Microsoft Data Services Landscape, including SQL Server, Azure SQL, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse & Azure Data Lake.

The firm credits the rapid growth of these services to the Data Lync team’s expertise in Microsoft's data services ecosystem.

Invise also worked with other IT partners to share skillsets and service mutual clients.      

“One part of our business that’s thriving is what we call our partner-to-partner arrangements,” Harrison said.

“We do a lot of what we call cooperative, not competitive engagements within the local market where we have skillsets that are required by other similar organisations, and they have skillsets required by us.”

“We partner quite heavily within the local community to drive success, and it is one thing that I do believe is the future of the channel where we have specialist organisations partnering together to drive client outcomes instead of a single partner trying to dominate the client landscape.”

“We've partnered successfully with Data#3 to provide collaboration services to the Department of Justice.”

“We've also partnered successfully multiple times [with]…VMware to deliver a lot of success for mutual clients, and then partnerships that we have with the likes of Datacom here locally, where Datacom and Invise and Fortinet have a very successful arrangement where we're able to provide the skills needed to deploy the Fortinet services for Datacom customers here in Queensland.”

Harrison said Invise’s focus now is to consolidate growth.

“When we started the business, we put together a very clear and structured five-year plan for the business, and…FY23 was very much about consolidating those early gains and continuing to grow the reputation and brand within the market, which I think we did a really good job of,” he said.

“We'll continue to drive through that original business plan that we put together; it's, again, another growth consolidation year for us.”

“We're going to double down on our focus with our key departments and making sure that we have that reputation of being highly skilled for the vendor partners that we have within the organisation.”

“It's not trying to bring on more partners or anything like that. It's ultimately about consolidating and strengthening the existing relationship with the vendor community.”