How a York tech business is helping organisations rethink digital transformation

Outlier Technology has achieved impressive growth in recent years. What key milestones or turning points stand out as key to your success?

The thing we keep seeing as a clear signal that we're delivering value is that our clients keep coming back to us to ask for help on an increasing number of projects. I think the turning point has been with a few clients who've asked us to bring more people to help, and the feedback we've received has been really positive. We're proud of the team - we're not huge by any stretch of the imagination, but we can punch well above our weight because we put a lot of effort into finding the right people with solid skills and ensure they work on the right projects.

Key to our growth has also been our appointment as one of the strategic technology partners for our biggest client. It's an amazing position for us to be in - I kind of have to pinch myself a little bit - but it's really helping us think about how we focus on building out in the areas that we're good at.

Your USP is to help businesses 'make sense' of their technology systems. How do you and your team typically engage with businesses? Can you describe your collaboration approach?

We usually start with a discovery engagement - anything from 1 to 6 weeks where we deep dive into the problems our clients are facing in a particular area. Ultimately, we're there to develop a deep understanding of key challenges and their impact, so we can start developing a route out of them. The big driver we have is to deliver value immediately if we can. If we spot something that's obviously wrong on day 1 and it can be fixed, then we'll propose it straight away.

Everything we propose is developed with respect to the client, their expertise, their people and their business - there's no point in us proposing the biggest and most expensive technology if no one is able to operate it.

What makes your approach to business partnerships different from traditional tech services?

Significant numbers of technology consultancies partner with big vendors. The lure is huge - you can tap into their marketing infrastructure and make a lot of money selling their packages. But we've been on the other end of so many "bad fit" technology selections that we have avoided that kind of tie in. We have deep skills with lots of different technologies and systems, so we aim to give balanced technology selection and advice.

We try to be as targeted as possible with technology and change - we help our clients really nail down the problem they need to solve and then select the right tools to help them achieve it.

You have a unique viewpoint in saying not every business should rush into AI integration. Can you explain why?

We've been using AI tools very successfully in products for decades - in many cases without even knowing it. What we're seeing at the moment though is a huge hype cycle specifically with Large Language Models like ChatGPT. They are very impressive and they feel almost like magic but they're not. They're a tool with lots of capabilities but also lots of caveats. The question we're seeing come up a lot is "How can I use AI in my business" which basically translates to "I have a hammer, what can I hit with it?". When we view it like that, it's an absurd position to take.

We're not anti AI at all - far from it, we deliver AI projects in all sorts of different domains. What we focus on is the problems we need to solve irrespective of the tools. When we take a step back and look at our organisations and take a systematic approach to understanding where there are issues and inefficiencies, and what the impact of those issues are, we can step out of hype cycle and really focus on what is the right tool for the job.

Sometimes that might be some form of AI model. But equally it might be as simple as a well-timed notification to the right person, to check the right thing. if we're outcome and impact driven, we shouldn't be too worried about the implementation.

What size of business do you typically with?

We have a broad range at the moment. We've been working with non-for-profits in the range of 60-200 people, commodity trading firms with 600-1000 people, Water companies with 2000+ people and larger corporates with 20k+. It's quite a big range but we find it really useful because it helps us share some of those practices and adapt them - sometimes the bigger corporates need to strip back some of their technology and process, and sometimes some of the smaller clients can gain some really useful advantage by strengthening some of their process.

One of the most personally challenging and interesting projects I've worked on recently was helping with technology strategy for a non-profit operating in regions where their people could only access the internet for 2-3 hours per week, and with no access or insight into the IT skills we take for granted. Shaping something that really focuses on what is viable in those locations and stripping back everything to make sure they could get their work done under those constraints was both eye opening and fulfilling.

What are your key goals and/or priorities for the next 12 months?

We do a lot of work with finance teams, and we keep seeing the same problems come up in different organisations - large and small, so we're working on a few products that can help with the day to day. Revenue and sales performance forecasting, account and cost centre hierarchies – they are all super niche but that's where we can see the opportunity and that's where we can play to our strengths.

We also work with Heads of Data and teams who struggle with building their technology platforms, and apply data governance effectively. As a result, we're packaging a data platform that has all of the process, security and tools that lets organisations start working with their own data effectively and without the pain of figuring all of this detail out. We're starting to bring a number of new clients onboard now so I'm hoping by this time next year we will have lots of success stories to share.