Actinic Software

Kevin Grumball started Actinic - an e-commerce software solutions provider - from his garage at home. As the growth in e-commerce has taken off, so has the company.


From those humble beginnings, Actinic was floated on the London Stock Exchange last year. The company is valued at roughly £200 million and with 50 employees it now spans several countries with staff based as far away as France and Hungary.

But rather than centralising the group into a corporate head office, Actinic has grown as a network of software developers working from a string of garages, spare bedrooms and makeshift offices across the globe.

Grumball had already had one successful company. A consultancy made up of a network of consultants, all working from home. Grumball was looking for a new challenge with his friend and former lodger, Chris Barling.

Having spotted that e-commerce was about to revolutionise the business world, they decided to set up their own company. But as two men working from a shed, they quickly realised that the top end of the market was very crowded. "Besides if you are trying to sell to Dell and you are two men in a shed, forget it." So Actinic was formed to provide low-cost and simple e-commerce solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Having already run one business from home, Grumball was determined to remain a teleworker. "Teleworking in itself is very attractive. It is a lifestyle thing. Once you have teleworked it is very hard to go back," he explains. But not just for the bosses, Grumball believes that many staff can benefit from teleworking and encourages it wherever possible in the company.

In particular, the technical staff benefit from being able to work from home. "They just long to work on problems," he points out. "So leave them on their own." In addition, Actinic can pick and choose among the best software developers irrespective of where they live.

And Grumball reels off anecdotal evidence and research to back up his argument. People, he argues, don't leave because of money. The overwhelming reason that people leave their job is because they don't get on with their manager.

So how does Actinic avoid the loneliness and isolation that teleworking can bring. Grumball is careful to make sure that working from home doesn't mean working alone. He invests a lot of time and energy in making sure that staff have access to shared resources, regular conferences, forums, emails, phone calls and bulletin boards.

All of this is designed to replicate the human contact that most of us get from our day at work. But more than that Grumball encourages everyone to use the forums as a way to chat, gossip or simply have a moan if they want - something that most people get while standing at the coffee machine. Directors are banned to encourage a better dialogue.

This all stems from Grumballs' belief that staff should be owners not employees. Something that he thinks marks him out from other entrepreneurs who can lose sight of the fact that you can only succeed through people.

Actinic is built upon creating a more enjoyable work atmosphere. Grumball explains that he has no interest in becoming rich while presiding over a company of millionaire, burned out, divorced executives. Working is about having fun, he says. And it pays to keep your staff happy particularly if they are dealing with customers. "Imagine if you had just one disgruntled employee and how many customers they could upset in just one day," he said.

But his interest is financial as well as personal. Hiring in the IT industry, in particular, is very competitive. "The key thing is personnel. All your assets have legs in a software company."

As he explains, the cost of hiring and training staff is so high that it pays to keep the ones that you do hire. It is also for this reason that Actinic invests a lot in hiring the right people including psychometric testing and personality analysis at all levels.

But the same applies to any small business. "You will always regret a bad hire. There is no such thing as a quick and dirty hire," he warns.

As the chief executive of Actinic, Grumball firmly believes that human resources is his responsibility. Ultimately he has to be responsible for the health of the company. That means motivating his staff and shareholders. Grumball believes that both can be achieved in the same way.

By ensuring that his staff own shares and believe in the future of the company, that Actinic maintains its position at the cutting edge in a high-margin business, uses the experience and skills of its staff and works within an ethical framework.

While he has the responsibility for HR at Actinic, Grumball does save a few words for the government and its tax policies. In particular, he condemns the proposed introduction of IR35 and its effect on the IT industry in particular. "If IR35 had been in place we could not have got Actinic off the ground," he says, warning that the effect will be dire. At best rates will go up and people will find avoidance schemes. But at worst, it could destroy a lot of fledgling businesses.