A high growth payroll business has spawned a fintech spin-off with expansion plans aligned to its forefather.
Dataplan’s IT platform has been separated out from the Grimsby base, almost two years after chief executive Richard Rowell completed a management buy-out from the accountancy practice owner he was a partner in.
Now with its own industrial chic satellite location and a team of 16 already assembled, it is ramping up.
Datacode is described as a “small agile software company with big ideas and big ambitions”.
Mr Rowell, who is at the helm of both, said: “We have built our own products for years, and with technology getting more and more important, we have split the group into two, developing a technology and outsourcing arm.
“It is HR software and the biggest customer is Dataplan. It is coming along nicely, we now have 16 people and appetite to attract more.”
The payroll operation was a legacy business of Grimsby’s last listed entity, Cosalt. Fellow town headquartered regional independent chartered accountancy practice Forrester Boyd acquired it in 1989, with the business having been founded 20 years earlier. In 2009 it was a team of 15 and has now grown almost 10-fold with 122 across the group.
“I bought the business in May 2018, and what it did was let us invest for the future,” Mr Rowell said. “Forrester Boyd was really supportive, but we’re clearly in two different markets. A third to a half of what we do now is inside the M25. Doing what we do, you don’t need to be down there. If we transplanted down there it would cost millions. It is nice to be able to invest locally.”
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Concrete and timber formed desks and open cable trays and air filtration systems set it apart from a standard office, with soft break-out areas for daily meetings to iron out “blockers” for the team. Work has evolved, and now the aim is to accelerate.
“With Datacode we have invested £500,000 in getting set up, getting the right people on board,” Mr Rowell said. “Finding software developers is not an easy task, but we’ve got a team together and now it is full steam ahead.
“We have spent a lot of time researching it, we didn’t want to create a battery farm. It is a big investment and a big commitment to this town.”
comes five years after Dataplan made the first step away from the parent company, moving out of the South St Mary’s Gate headquarters to a standalone office on Prince Albert Gardens.
The near-neighbour office was snapped up last year.
“One of the products we do is E-Payslips, and that alone has 500,000 users,” Mr Rowell said. “A lot of national work is being served out of here. We will continue to invest in this, and develop some technology talent.
“What we do is really difficult to outsource, to talk it through with other people, Things grow organically, it can be a constantly evolving workstream, so you need to be in charge of your own destiny. It is the only way to grow it well."