You already know the time period, digital transformation? Properly, Mark Sweeny is one thing of an professional in it. He’s the founder de Novo Options, a Welsh tech agency delivering digital transformation to corporations throughout finance, procurement, HR, payroll and managed providers.
Based within the aftermath of Covid-19 in 2021, as we speak it’s a 12.1 million pound turnover firm with 136 workers and has gained a variety of awards; It was acknowledged by the Sunday Instances 100 because the eighth quickest rising enterprise within the UK in 2025, and this yr, the Welsh authorities awarded it the St David Award for its contribution to the Welsh economic system.
All in all, a great innings up to now. However to actually perceive its success, in response to Sweeny, we now have to return to his earlier enterprise, Certus Options.
Pre de Novo and a “profitable” exit
Sweeny calls Certus, which was based a decade sooner than de Novo, “the pioneer of digital transformation for Oracle cloud purposes.” Certus offered transformation providers for HR payroll, finance and procurement operations for corporations, together with these within the public sector. In different phrases, getting them into the cloud.
“That firm actually wrote the e book of easy methods to do these implementations manner again in 2011,” remarks Sweeny of Certus. “That’s correct entrepreneurial stuff, actually, actually excessive danger,” he provides with relish.
Danger actually featured within the early days of Certus, the specter of chapter loomed not as soon as, however twice, he tells me. Sweeny places this era all the way down to a well-recognized entrepreneurial incidence, being forward of the curve on the time.
Beneath Certus, public sector purchasers included the central authorities and the Workplace of Nationwide Statistics, which made historical past as the primary ever Oracle Cloud implementation within the UK. Following that, Certus managed cloud implementations within the Treasury and the Dwelling Workplace. Buzz round an acquisition began after they labored with Accenture, a US programs integrator, on the Dwelling Workplace undertaking. The acquisition got here in Might 2018, which Sweeny calls “a profitable monetary exit.”
The following few years have been slightly staid for Sweeny. Discovering himself holed up at house throughout the pandemic years, he started to ruminate on the acquisition. “We had unfinished enterprise,” he displays. By this, he says he means sure issues that didn’t materialise throughout the acquisition, plus new alternatives available in the market.
Sitting down along with his Welsh spouse, Natalie, who he says has been a serious affect in his life and profession, he determined he had one other enterprise in him and his spouse agreed however made a deal, they’d transfer to Wales to do it.
Sweeny says he didn’t wish to create one other Certus. As an alternative, he believes de Novo stood out in what he calls a extra crowded market by creating AI pushed digital options utilizing each ServiceNow and Oracle expertise, each cloud-based platforms. “That was one thing that was not being completed, and that gave us a extremely large differentiator,” he provides.
Not solely a private relocation for Sweeny and his spouse, Natalie, Wales supplied one thing else too, a burgeoning tech ecosystem and beneficial authorities help.
The Welsh tech scene
“I may see how the Welsh authorities was making an attempt to reposition the economic system from manufacturing, trade, agriculture and tourism to excessive tech superior manufacturing and digital expertise,” he explains.
Other than rising governmental help for tech companies in Wales, Sweeny may additionally see the tactical benefit of organising store within the land of the crimson dragon. “If we have been doing this in London, you wouldn’t hear of us as a result of we’d be drowned out by all these AI corporations,” he admits. “But when we’re down in Wales, it’s form of large fish, small pond. What we may do is principally elevate the corporate on a nationwide stage and we’d get extra projection and protection.”
“We’ve had an epiphany second, we don’t have the identical have to promote it,” says Sweeny of de Novo in comparison with Certus. “What we wish to see is one thing that stands the check of time.”
He additionally noticed being Wales-based as making a daring assertion about sourcing homegrown expertise after Brexit. “Brexit hasn’t completed us any favours by way of the expertise pool,” he admits. “And as I say so many instances, you may both sit there and moan about it, otherwise you chunk the bullet and also you say, proper, we’re going to develop our personal.”
Placing his cash the place his mouth is, Sweeny works with the Welsh authorities’s apprenticeship scheme, which in partnership with the College of South Wales, helps companies, resembling his, put money into the native economic system to construct the following era of tech expertise.
“I knew if we based mostly ourselves down right here, not solely would we now have the differentiation, however in time, Welsh public sector our bodies and Welsh corporations would slightly purchase regionally, and that may give us a aggressive benefit,” he provides. “So we’re the one Oracle companion that’s based mostly in Wales. And we’re really, I believe, the one SME within the UK that really does ServiceNow and Oracle collectively. So our differentiators from the get-go have been large.”
Having reached a multi-million turnover fee in simply 5 years, he places down the agency’s fast-growth success to a couple core issues. The primary, the aforementioned Welsh id which makes them stand out in a crowded tech market: What we’re doing is integrating the de Novo model into the very material of Wales. We’re constructing a legacy. We’ve got no intentions to promote the corporate. That’s basically the primary.”
Regardless of a crowded market, Sweeny didn’t fee the competitors after they began out. “We may provide differentiated decisions based mostly on high quality and high quality supply, which involves the popularity facet. We’ve all the time been the folks you name, particularly the federal government, when it’s all gone horribly fallacious and also you want somebody to come back and get you out of it.”
Thirdly, he credit “insatiable demand” as a driver of the agency’s success. “You don’t get to do all of the intelligent issues like AI in the event you can’t do the fundamentals of reworking what you are promoting operations. So the demand is certainly there.”
“In the event you’re going to be an AI native, however you’re going to take a seat in your bed room for the remainder of your life, I don’t suppose you’ll be as profitable as you suppose you’ll be.”
Sweeny is intentional about his plans for de Novo, particularly that promoting isn’t on the desk. “We’ve had an epiphany second, we don’t have the identical have to promote it,” says Sweeny of de Novo in comparison with Certus. “What we wish to see is one thing that stands the check of time.”
Going again to digital transformation, an idea that has outlined Sweeny’s entrepreneurial life up to now, right here’s his definition for many who are nonetheless in the dead of night: “I believe digital transformation in its easiest kind is principally eradicating paper and guide work and having the ability to automate it by way of expertise.”
Digital transformation and AI
Sweeny agrees there’s widespread confusion within the enterprise group about what digital transformation means. “There’s confusion on the market as a result of the expertise works, however in the event you don’t really rework what you are promoting, and also you don’t purchase into there being a special manner of working, which goes to be extra environment friendly, simpler, that means that you can go on and do extra high-value jobs, and also you don’t undertake the transformation, you don’t change bodily how you’re employed, you then by no means maximise the return on funding the expertise can provide.”
The following logical step to this dialog is to ask the digital transformation guru about AI. He calls automation processes “low hanging fruit” and “fast wins” for organisations. He additionally needs to guarantee AI-agnostic readers that AI is nothing new, and that it has merely been packaged commercially by way of the likes of Chat GPT and Claude. “I got here to work within the Nineteen Eighties and we have been speaking about AI, the ideas of it,” he says. “It has a legacy that goes all the best way again to Alan Turing.”
He has a number of phrases of warning to the youthful generations arising within the tech world in an period of AI adoption. He believes these that may go the space will possess folks abilities in addition to digital: “I believe generally with the youthful era the social aspect is unfortunately missing and that’s what drives nice collaboration, nice concepts and nice work actually. In the event you’re going to be an AI native, however you’re going to take a seat in your bed room for the remainder of your life, I don’t suppose you’ll be as profitable as you suppose you’ll be. You’ve acquired to have the ability to work together with folks. People bond on connection. AI or no AI.”
Reflective phrases from a serial tech entrepreneur…
