News

November 2005

The Lapworth Consultancy are proud to have been featured in the Thursday, 10th November 2005 edition of the Newbury Business News as part of our 10th Anniversary celebrations.

For further articles from Newbury's leading paid for newspaper go to www.newburytoday.co.uk

The article below is as printed by the Newbury Business News:

In the early 1990's, Newbury became known as Boomtown, and one of the barometers of its success was a proliferation of IT companies.

However the late 1990s brought recession and hard times. When Shaun Lapworth started his new company in 1995 he has already anticipated trouble.

"The business I came from went bust three months after I left because they decided to go further down the hardware route," he said. "But it's people, and creative use of software which solves problems not lumps of hardware, so I knew things had to change.

"I felt the whole IT industry was product and hardware driven and I saw the opportunity to make technology a delivery tool for businesses."

Shaun Lapworth's gut feeling was underlined when he ran a project for the BBC, creating the first Windows network in a BBC new media unit.

He explained: "Having delivered the goods, the equipment then sat there in a corner of the room until they could find someone to put it together - and that was me. It needed someone to deliver the solution as well."

The foundation of his career was built in his early days in further education.

"I have a degree in mining engineering, so I learned how to build cities upside down. It makes me a strong lateral thinker. One of the 28 subjects I took was computing, and I realised what a powerful tool it would be."

iT moves so fast that e-mail and broadband are already yesterday's news. The Lapworth Consultancy is now focusing on what it describes as collaborative working: the ability to deliver even faster solutions that enable people to work together on the same project, but from different corners of the globe.

"Even a one-person company can be a global business through integrated use of the Internet, video conferencing and voice over IP. Time zones don't exist in global businesses now and there are no barriers to trade that can not be overcome. Last week we had an engineer in Sydney, I am going to Mecca on Friday, and we are building some equipment for a company in China. Ninety percent of the work in Mecca I can do remotely.

"The benefits are that technology is helping our clients to be more competitive. We are reducing their overheads, increasing their market share, delivering back their quality of life, and reducing stress."

TLC employs more than 50 staff at its Newbury office, where of course people practice what they preach. "We estimate productivity per capita has increased by 20 per cent since we introduced workings from home."

"We've improved staff retention and it has been particularly helpful to people with young families. I work where ever there's an Internet connection. I've connected up on a boat going across the Atlantic and even halfway up a mountain."

One of Mr Lapworth's spare time interests is gliding, another is sailing (he chose to go to Cornwall to study engineering purely "because the windsurfing was good").

Escapism perhaps? Not a bit of it: "I was always intrigued by the technology used in both these sports, and i'm using it all the time. A glider is full of technology. And once I've landed on the field I can pick up my e-mails, then use satellite navigation to find the nearest pub to have some lunch."

He is already anticipating a future where IT is a fashion item and is accessed as easily as water from a tap.

The downside is that while technology is evolving, so are the hackers and spammers. However the Lapworth machine is already processing this information. "They will be doing a lot of work to stop progress from happening, but by then a large part of our work will be more security based.

"It's just a sign of the evolution of communication," he said.