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Collaboration is key
Leap overcame the challenges it faced over the years through turning to outside help. This is particularly important for the managing director, as he believes that “being in Western Australia, you have to realise that you don't know it all”.
“There's a lot of knowledge to be learned from vendors, a lot of knowledge to learn from distributors and from peers, so we see those three partnerships as being pretty key for us,” he said.
Bhana has also made use of multiple networking events, and it’s helped both the business and his own leadership abilities.
“We're by no means perfect leaders, and coming into a business, you know that a lot of those blind spots and bottlenecks start and end with the owner,” he said.
“If something's happening, it's probably because of us as leaders, and that's where we need to get better. So, we've been using that to help us execute, grow, and probably more importantly put in place the pillars for building next generation leaders in the business [as well as] getting way more mature in our partnerships and relationships.”
Over the years, Leap has racked up a number of vendor partnerships, with four significant deals being with Microsoft, Telstra, Apple and Dell.
In fact, Bhana says Leap’s “most significant relationship” is with Microsoft.
“That's been a deliberate intent around our platform,” Bhana said. “That's the platform that we choose to help our clients grow and scale with, so we've always aligned ourselves with Microsoft.”
Dell was the first vendor that Leap partnered with and is also an important relationship, but Bhana admits the time difference between the PC maker and Microsoft was approximately the first day of business versus the second day of business.
Then the partnerships with Telstra and Apple are due to Leap’s cloud first and mobile first approach.
“Especially in Western Australia, organisations like Telstra are one of the few organisations that can reach all the areas that we need,” he said.
“We also see the push for mobile privacy and security, which is key. That's why we've partnered with Apple across the spectrum. For us, they're a key partner in that space.”
Some of these partners have been involved with Leap in one of its recent achievements — its work creating an IT strategy for a not-for-profit high school.
Starting in 2018, the million-dollar-plus project is now entering its rollout phase across 24 campuses in Western Australia and Queensland.
“That all came because we started with, 'Okay, let's talk about your strategy and where you want to go from a business perspective,' not from a, 'Oh yeah, let's talk about the bits and bytes,’" Bhana said.
“We went through that strategic engagement with them, consulting engagement and presented to the board, and one of the key parts of that was our relationship that we created with Telstra, Apple and Cisco Meraki.”
Telstra’s involvement with the project included the use of its network and inter-regional services, and Cisco Meraki’s connectivity and visibility was leveraged.
Meanwhile, Apple’s Financial Services (AFS) was the “linchpin” during the commercial side of the project.
“There were other partners involved at the proposal stage, but the structure and offer from AFS were incredibly compelling for the client but most importantly met their own funding needs,” Bhana said.
“Other partners were putting forward traditional finance offerings that didn’t stack up, so this helped to seal the project win for us.
“We were the only firm partnering with AFS, which surprised us given how dominant their position is in the market.”
Leap’s success extends past recent projects and into its finances, as it is on track this year to achieving $5 million in revenue, with strong growth targets for the next three years due to large volumes of hardware and software and relying on as-a-service products.
“For a partner organisation, recurring services are the thing that you want to anchor to,” Bhana said.
Of course, consulting is another significant element of the business, so constantly checking up on its consulting revenue and its growth is key, with Bhana planning to push Leap’s consultancy across technology risk segments in 2020.
“When I talk about technology risk segments, I don't just mean cyber security, I think that's an element across every business but what we really look at is kind of like the big five risks for organisations; strategic risks, operational risks, financial risks, reputational risks and compliance risks,” he explains.
“They are not something that a lot of organisations have a handle on, and we feel there's a huge consulting opportunity to help lead those clients through that quagmire.
"For many, they’re confused. They don't have the skills to address it all, and they're just looking for how they can meet that challenge head on in the market.”
But another part of the equation comes down to chance, Bhana added.
“We've been very fortunate as well. Sometimes right space, right location, high return on luck; very fortunate to be able to do what we've done with the people that have been part of our journey because we've seen some incredible team members come and go,” he said.
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