Despite the challenges of 2020, Krome Technologies reports strong financial year-end results, with 15% growth in turnover.

In these exceptionally difficult circumstances, Krome has demonstrated its strong business resilience and has managed to maintain impressive growth figures.

Following its eleventh year of trading, and despite the challenges presented by COVID-19 throughout 2020, Technology Consultancy Krome Technologies today announces a strong set of financial results and operational performance for 2019/20.

Founded in November 2009, Krome Technologies have continued to build on their strengths year on year, demonstrating a steady and organic growth pattern. In a year where COVID-19 has significantly impacted businesses and the economy, Krome, whose financial year ended 31 October 2020, has seen its year-end in its strongest position to date, with turnover exceeding £18.3m, increasing its annual turnover by 15% from £15.9m, and profits up by 11% from last year.

Whilst COVID-19 has had a huge impact on many industries, the pandemic and the government restrictions have forced organisations to rapidly adopt multiple new technologies to facilitate the need for remote working; during the pandemic, Krome has seen an increase for its user support services, along with the boost in demand for online collaboration tools including Office 365 and Teams. Krome is fortunate enough to also work with some of the UK’s leading healthcare, pharmaceutical and retail supermarket giants, whose vital services have continued to be in high demand throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Another contributing factor to its success this year has been the increase of its service-based revenue stream, with continued growth in demand for its cloud, and managed service offerings. With system availability being critical for organisations during the pandemic, many businesses are now moving to a cloud-first strategy, adopting Krome’s cloud services such as BaaS, IaaS, and DRaaS.

2020 has certainly not been a year without challenges though, as a business, navigating through these uncertain times, there has of course been concerns and a reluctance to be complacent; Krome’s upmost priority now and throughout the pandemic however has been ensuring the health and welfare of its employees, whilst continuing to provide first-rate, reliable, support and service levels to its clients.

Rupert Mills, Krome Co-Founder and CEO comments:

“The last financial year has been extremely challenging from everyone’s perspective and Krome are no exception to this. I’m very proud of the effort our team have put in to ensure we can deliver the results for our clients when circumstances are difficult. We’ve been able to move most of our services to a “working from home” model, following the Government guidelines and safeguarding our team, whilst not dropping the quality of our output. The team members who have remained in the offices to ensure we can continue to service hardware / delivery needs for clients are especially appreciated for the work they’ve put in supporting everyone else.

In terms of the growth we’ve seen again this year, it builds on our long term strategy, we’ve never been a business about the ‘short game’ and have always focussed on delivering on long term partnerships with our clients, I think it’s these partnerships that have worked well, allowing us to react quickly and support the clients’ needs and changes at this time.

Some of our clients are going through extremely challenging times and some are busier than ever, but we’ve tried to be flexible and understanding in our approach with both sides of that, continuing on the theme of partnership.

We’ve also spent a lot of time refining internal processes and implementing new systems while we’ve been working differently and ultimately when the economy comes through this and things recover, we look forward to being in a better position than ever to move forwards.”

In Krome’s annual employee survey in September, when asked how well Krome managed its employees during the COVID outbreak, 94% of its employees stated ‘well to extremely well’, with the further 6% citing ‘OK’. Further feedback from this survey also reported that 98% of people felt confident in the business’s stability to support their job role during this time.

Whilst Krome has continued to make a small number of hires, it has not significantly grown its team during the past year, it has however focused on developing its team from the inside, making several internal promotions including expanding its board of Directors with new appointments.

Krome Co-Founder and Commercial Director Sam Mager commented:

“2020 has certainly had it challenges; however, it has been amazing to see how the team has risen to the challenge. We have a very strong culture at Krome and it is one that has grown organically, that is not forced or disingenuous. Throughout the year, we have made the effort to keep our entire team informed of developments, hosting regular “all hands Team calls” detailing how Covid-19 has affected our business, both negatively and positively, and it has taken a strong team effort to achieve the significant growth we have achieved.
This is one of the strongest years of growth we have experienced, which reflects on the maturity of our business and our overall service offering, allowing us to adapt and meet our clients evolving requirements throughout this challenging year, but it is our people that have made the difference. We have promoted several members of staff internally and this personal growth and development is nothing short of inspiring. For the team to step up in the way they have has been amazing to see. As an employer, we simply couldn’t ask any more of them, they have gone over and above time and time again and we are exceptionally grateful and proud of each and every one of them.”

Whilst the global pandemic is unfortunately not over, Krome approach 2021 with confidence and a determination to continue with its ambitious growth plans, Sam Mager continued:

“We have aggressive growth plans for 20/21 as we are aiming to break the £20m barrier, but our business has always performed well in the face of adversity. We started the business in the midst of the credit crunch, and we have grown year on year since then. We have achieved this through employing high-calibre staff and having confidence in our team. We have a number of people who have been with us since day one and our staff turnover is very low. This underlines that our culture is what holds us together and enables us to perform well during difficult times. The economy isn’t predicted to turnaround until at least the end of 2022, perhaps even longer, however, we firmly believe that with our consultancy lead approach and with the skilled and dedicated team that we have, we will achieve our goals and continue to grow.”

As well as focusing on their own business stability, at a time when charity fundraising efforts have drastically been reduced due to the restrictions, Krome has also continued to support their local charity partner Shooting Star Children’s Hospice’s throughout 2020, hosting several remote and virtual fundraising challenges across their teams, including a virtual bike ride across America and a steps challenge where members walked collectively over 7.5million steps, a distance equivalent to traveling from London to New York.

Sam Mager comments:

“I am sure most have struggled with the tedium of lockdown. Personally, not being able to spend time face to face with the team has been odd at best, however, we have made a real effort to ensure that we have stayed as connected as we can. Our on-going support of Shooting Star Children’s Hospices has been one example of the team coming together, outside of work time, to support each other as well as a phenomenal charity.

I personally took part in the October walkathon, and whilst getting the steps in wasn’t the easiest, due to challenging weather, the support from the team really pushed us all on, it developed some healthy competition across the business departments and pulled us together collaboratively at a time when we could not physically be together as a team. It has inspired the team to set a bigger goal and in 20/21; we plan to pull a team together with the aim of collecting enough steps to have circumnavigated the Globe! It is important for our internal Krome community, to continue to give back to our local community; by continuing to support Shooting Star Children’s Hospices, we hope to make a positive difference to local children and young people with life-limiting conditions, and their families.”

The surrey based technology company has an ambitious vision: to be the UK’s most people-centric technology consultancy. In addition to its focus on delivering the highest service levels and leading technology solutions for their customers, Krome are also committed to investing in their people, internal systems, and overall business culture to deliver an enhanced customer and employee experience.