How Rosslyn has adapted to change

Rosslyn has aimed from the start to stay ahead of market changes and implement the latest value-adding innovations in our products. Like any good knowledge-driven company, we believe in continuous reinvestment in ourselves, and relentless, resilient adaptation to new situations and opportunities.

Our story started in 2007, with our foundation by Charles Clark and Hugh Cox, two former British Army officers with strong private sector track records. We named the company after Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, with its mysterious, undeciphered carvings. Our pioneering primary product, RAPid, combined four key technologies - data extraction; cleansing; enrichment; and visualisation - and we soon built a client roster of A-list businesses around the world.

We were one of the first movers in cloud computing analytics, debuting our first cloud-based solution - a self-service spend analytics app for our RAPid data platform - in 2009, just one year after Google released the beta of its Google App Engine for the cloud. That same year, RAPid won the Technology Excellence Award for “Best New Product”. Unlike other, older-generation firms, who have had to retool their businesses and technologies for the cloud era, the cloud’s been in our DNA from the start.

By 2010 Charles Clark was already listed as one of Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine’s Provider Pros to Know. We weren’t content to stay as a supply chain analytics provider, though; and we soon developed RAPid into an enterprise cloud analytics platform supporting multiple forms of analysis, from baggage handling to music royalties, giving us a far wider and more resilient business. Our cloud-based subscription services are highly scalable, in reach and volume, and in July 2011 we expanded into the US with the formation of Rosslyn Analytics, Inc. Now we have thousands of users in over 50 countries worldwide.

In 2014 we listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM board for high-growth companies, providing us with a new source of growth capital to support further development. We built up a track record of prompt implementation and high return on investment for our key clients, achieving over 250% ROI within two months in many cases. With our subscription-driven business model, we have seen strong customer retention, while keeping our clients’ hardware and resource overheads low. We have driven our development throughout from our own in-house proprietary technology and strong intellectual property holdings.

By mid-decade, we were recognized as one of the very few companies able to deliver a complete, ready-to-use, self-service Business Intelligence platform creating accelerated business value for our clients. All this time, we’ve focused on developing a multi-purpose
dynamic data architecture and enhancing our platform’s scalability and adaptability. We’ve built in deep functionality that’s been made even more flexible and scalable through diverse modules and capabilities. We’ve also stayed open to acquiring other businesses where they have valuable and complementary technology to bring to the table - one high-speed way to stay ahead of new trends.

We showed how proactively we could adapt to sudden crises by rolling out our COVID-19 dashboard, based on our RAPid technology, which allowed our clients to identify supply chain risk stemming from the pandemic. We’ve created new channels for business growth by expanding and deepening our partner network, giving us extra reach into new areas.

In May 2020 we executed a highly successful, heavily oversubscribed share placement that secured us more capital to fund growth. Despite COVID, we already had a strong order book, and plans in place to triple our turnover in the next three years, having already passed the critical milestone for many high-growth tech companies and broken even in 2020. This also means that, unlike some venture capital-backed tech companies, we can fund our development autonomously, from our own revenue model. Our new CEO, Paul Watts, came on board in May 2021 to revitalize operations with a new software-focused mindset by auditing our technology assets and operating models, and appointing new key team leaders.

All of this has kept us at the forefront of the industry. In October 2021, Spend Matters put us on their ‘50 Providers to Know 2021’ list. But we’re not stopping there. With the pandemic and other macroeconomic changes impacting business models everywhere, we’ve reviewed our own. We’ve refined our focus on the products leading our business; revisiting, revising, and expanding the RAPid platform. We’ve landed new client relationships, including high-value customers ready to sign up for long periods. And we’re refreshing our relationship with our customers - both by fostering relations and by concentrating on their user experience, putting this under a single key executive. This factors into our fundamental business proposition - helping organisations create business value from previously inaccessible data, via a single integrated platform. The simpler and more accessible our platform is, the better for our clients

We began 2022 by releasing Rosslyn 10 delivering a transformative user interface which gives users simplified access to the data and transforms the user experience. It also enabled us to build a foundation architecture to deliver advanced intelligent automation and machine learning, while enhancing its key data mining capabilities. We’ve secured more major new client wins as the new decade unfolds, in the face of challenging business conditions.

Our Rosslyn platform is also designed from day one for continuous improvement, following best agile development practice. Regular upgrades to keep the platform at the cutting edge should be a matter of course. So right now, we’re positioning, not just to adapt to change, but to lead it.