Software Solutions & Services from an Entrepreneur

Starting the business

The Entrepreneur

I have created and run three companies over the years; the first two were small ventures in online retail (“GOSAVEMONEY“), and my own Consultancy (“Swift & Sure“). However, my aim was always to start a business in my own professional space. My retirement from corporate life in 2020 provided the perfect opportunity, and getITright Ltd was born.

Picture of the getITright team: Wayne Humberstone (OPCC Beds), me, Simon Oddy (my Business Partner) and Phil Eaton (OPCC Beds) Delivery of the first ever Community & Operational Policing (COP) Hub to the Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner (OPCC) for Bedfordshire. A very proud moment for getITright Ltd (December 2021).

To introduce the thinking around getITright, here’s a short competition entry I wrote up in the first year of our operation; it was called “The getITright Story“…

The first year

The getITright Story

After a 46-year working life spent between the Army and the ICT Industry, I wanted to see whether the lessons learned along the way could be packaged up and used to build and grow a successful business.  The aim was to create something that put its people first, had a culture that engendered mutual respect, trust, and inclusivity, and was based on honesty, openness, and transparency.  I promised myself that I would test and prove my theory before I retired!

As I packed up my desk at my last corporate, I did wonder if I had lost my marbles, as I had enough in that job to keep me busy for the rest of my working life.  However, had I taken the easy option, I would literally be avoiding a challenge and giving up the opportunity to test theories that meant everything to me, and that simply isn’t my way.

getITright is an IT & Management Consultancy focused on Emergency Services (ES) “Blue Lights” (Police, Fire & Ambulance) and the UK MoD. I incorporated the business in the post-COVID era (May 2020), with my business partner, Simon.  We agreed that we wanted to give something back to the sectors in which we had spent our prior careers and more

The Dream

Our dream for getITright is to establish and build a company with a great culture, accepting and delivering against its social responsibilities and providing outstanding consultancy, products, and services to its customers. We want our people to enjoy the best possible working environment, allowing them to live their best lives at and beyond work.

Positive Social Impact – Locally & Beyond

We are extremely proud to be a Wiltshire business and want to build something that adds depth, strength, and diversity to the county’s working environment and population.  This includes provision of attractive career opportunities that help retain our graduate students in their home county and offers highly skilled work and technical apprenticeships to its residents. We want to make Wiltshire proud to host a business that cares about its public responsibilities, from job creation, through environmental issues to its ability to deliver products and services to key government departments. Our areas of engagement currently include ES, MOD, MOJ, Central and Local Government, Academia, and the NHS

Innovation for Life

Innovation is key to any business and to life itself. Initially, we had not intended to develop a product arm within getITright until Year 3, but COVID changed all that. From previous experience we had a very clear understanding of the tremendous stress that mission critical Control Room (CR) staff were under.  Constantly dealing with high pressure or even life-threatening situations by phone, their mental health and wellbeing was a constant concern; COVID multiplied that several times over.   Even pre-pandemic, these pressures could result in high staff absence, churn and in a worst-case scenario, self-harm.  CR staff are directly responsible for managing the dispatch of resources in response to incidents.  Without these key staff, the ES simply would not be able to deliver their public duty.

Recognising this serious threat to public safety, we brought our business plan forward and decided to commence product development immediately.  The initial product, proteCtoR™, is a biometrically led software solution that enables proactive management of staff mental health and wellness to be delivered. A completely unobtrusive “wearable” is worn on the arm, from which Heart Rate Variation (HRV) data is collected, collated, and reported upon, either individually or across teams.  The data provides a CaRescore, again either for individuals or a team, that drive interventions, as necessary. In essence, this allows leadership & management to deliver a statutory duty of care.  The solution is the only one of its kind on the market and should be used as part of a Wellbeing Programme within an organisation.

From a wider business perspective, we are currently engaged with Universities seeking to develop a campus wide application, ES (Police) on a public accessibility project and the NHS on both a Hospital Facilities application and IVF Prediction Calculator product.

Managing the pandemic

The Plan

We knew that incorporating a business in the early COVID era increased the risk of failure significantly, but we realised that achieving the dream was dependent on accepting and managing that risk.  We also felt that without entrepreneurs launching start-up businesses, the country would suffer from a lack of investment it badly needed at that point.  As anticipated, access to funding was very restricted and whilst appreciating that both government and commercial lenders were rightly focused on keeping existing businesses afloat and protecting jobs, it meant that we were purely self-funded for a long period before even small grants became available to companies like ours.

Simon and I share a passion to help our country “build back better” Post-BREXIT and COVID; to play a part in the nation’s recovery would be an absolute honour and privilege. Identifying the UK Free Ports programme as key to the plan, we established a UK/US consortium of five companies through which we offer a truly unique solution for end-to-end security in duty-free zones.  Free Ports is closely related to a national social regeneration plan, delivering thousands of jobs, and driving rebalancing across the country; we can play our part!

We have achieved so much in this first year and have so much more to give, but the reality is COVID has severely limited funding and will continue to hold us back. We are immensely proud that we are still in existence, given the severe challenges brought about by the pandemic, but this magical experience has given us even greater desire and ambition to continue our quest to make a difference locally and nationally, and the absolute belief that our dream is still alive. 

The second year

INCREASING OUR FOCUS ON THE PRODUCT

Having survived the many and varied challenges of COVID 19, we moved into our second year of trading in a very positive and upbeat manner. Having taken a decision to reshape the business to better align with market conditions and increase our focus on product, we amended the company name to “getITright Ltd Software Solutions & Services“. We worked exceptionally hard to develop and build a product portfolio with innovation, effectiveness, affordability and high quality at its heart. Like any software business, getITright is underpinned by its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and we have full ownership of our portfolio; our products are:

  • proteCtoR (TM). Biometric software solution for the proactive management of mental health/wellbeing.
  • Community & Operational Policing (COP) Hub. Public interaction with certain Police systems, partner agencies (e.g. Councils) and access to Critical Information.
  • Auto COP. Provides an Automatic Check On Presence – on “tagged” individuals.
  • omniprIMe International. Incident Management (IM) for “Everywhere“. For product information visit our website using the link below.

“A Highland Scot born and bred in the north east corner of Aberdeenshire, George is an Author, Poet, Public Speaker, and Entrepreneur…”

“A Highland Scot born and bred in the north east corner of Aberdeenshire, George is an Author, Poet, Public Speaker, and Entrepreneur…”