Sixteen years in the making

Someone recently pointed out, that Lucid Computer Solutions had turned sixteen years old. Happy Birthday to us! I have no idea where the last sixteen years have gone, it doesn’t feel like sixteen years have passed since I decided to quit my job and simply have a go at working for myself to see how it goes. Sixteen years later, with one hundred-plus business customers and a great team at Lucid Towers, here we are.

Over sixteen years so much has changed for the business and the solutions we put in place for our customers.

As I reflect over the last sixteen years in business, here are perhaps the slightly interesting milestones, challenges and thoughts, that might help you with your business…

Taking on that first employee

Looking back, this was such a big moment. Committing to having someone on the books and providing them with a regular income. I had so many worries about this. You go through all the concerns, like can we pay them? What do we need to do to increase revenue to support them? What if they stole the very small customer base we had at the time? Looking back, it was almost silly to worry about these things, but we’re only human and sometimes we unnecessarily worry. It turned out so well, I needn’t have worried. Jon if you’re reading this, thank you!

Moving towards being trusted business advisors

Whilst there is nothing wrong with helping people with broken laptop screens and slow computers, we want to be more than that. It’s been a gradual process to becoming the trusted business advisor for many businesses when it comes to all things IT Solutions and IT Operations. As we’ve matured, I feel the business has matured and we’re way beyond just providing IT Support. We’ve shifted towards becoming the in-house IT directors, helping businesses grow and increase productivity.

Embracing Cloud Solutions, early on

Part of the ethos here at Lucid is embracing change and always looking out for new solutions that help businesses grow. Relativity early on, in the grand scheme of things, we could see that there will be a significant shift from using onsite solutions like servers for example, to Cloud-based services which can be accessed on demand, 24/7. A big part of this was getting to grips with Office 365 and all of its true potential for replacing email systems, file servers and database applications. It felt like some other businesses were very keen to hold onto only supplying and supporting onsite servers, whereas I think what has served us well is trying as much as possible to move away from that and get the businesses we work with into the Cloud (where possible).

Being a customer service business first

This is our most important value within our business. We’re a customer service business, that provides IT Services. It’s not the other way around. Without working on our customer service every day, we wouldn’t have the customer retention that we do. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect. We work every day to improve and we quickly acknowledge when things aren’t quite at the level that we set for ourselves. 

Hopefully, that gives you some food for thought. Whilst it has been sixteen years, quite honestly, I feel like we’re just getting started. Even if we all look a little older, but are a lot wiser! Thank you to all of our team, past and present and thank you to all of our customers over the years – without you, we wouldn’t be here, sixteen years later.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions. Based in Redditch, they provide much more than just IT Support. He hasn’t aged a day in the last sixteen years. Honestly.