TBAT Innovation Ltd are celebrating their 20th year of trading. To help celebrate the last 20 years, Founding Director, Sam Stephens has been reminiscing about how he began the company and the successes TBAT have had.
In 2002, TBAT was established by Founding Director, Sam Stephens and 2 others. The company was originally named The Business Advice Team and was built from Sam’s desire to change his lifestyle to suit his young family, after spending his career working for Aerospace PLCs.
By 2008, Sam had brought in 2 new Directors, Matt Symonds as Managing Director and Simon Parke as Director, to create a strong board that had aligned ideas. They jointly refocused the business to support UK companies, as the UK was great at innovating! Together for the following 14 years, they built a strong brand and team of dedicated professionals with a common passion to provide impartial, open & honest advice to support clients to be successful in their innovation and developing their businesses.
To celebrate TBAT’s 20th Anniversary, Sam Stephens has spoken about the highlights of TBAT’s 20 years so far.
Q. How has TBAT evolved?
The comparison of where TBAT began and where we are now, is miles apart. For starters, we were originally a team of 3; we began employing in 2008 and through organic growth, we’re now a team of 30 brilliantly minded R&D experts across a huge range of industry sectors.
Our service offering has grown significantly, from offering general business consultancy advice, with just a fraction of the focus being on innovation, to now supporting solely innovative UK businesses to access funding for their projects through R&D Tax Credits, Grant Funding, and other tax relief schemes Capital Allowances, Video Games Tax Relief and SEIS/EIS.
Following the financial crash in 2008, Matt, Simon, and I made the decision to no longer focus on public sector work, and focus on private sector companies to support their innovation as UK industry bounced back.
After years of hard work, in 2012, we were connected with Oracle through a referral partner and secured their R&D Tax claim business – our first large, private sector client at the time. Through this, we learned the power of having strong referral partners and have grown our referral network considerably since.
Q. What are TBAT’s most memorable milestones?
TBAT have experienced many milestones throughout our 20 years, however my most memorable are firstly, moving into our first office location in Lockington. We moved in as 3 people and quickly began employing key team members.
Once the Lockington office was full, we moved again to our current Castle Donington office. I remember walking into that empty office space, thinking ‘how will we ever fill this space?’ and now all of our desks are filled. We have a satellite office in Oxford and plans for a Manchester presence this year.
In 2016, we celebrated another large milestone of reaching a turnover of over £1 million – after years of steady growth – and, have continued to grow our client base and turnover organically ever since.
The final milestone that really stands out for me is this year – my co-directors and I have nurtured the business and our team for the past 20 years, which has allowed Matt and I to hand over the Managing Director role to Ryan Mouncy, along with Vincent and Elaine as additional Directors of the business, giving us the opportunity to take a step back while remaining on the Board of Directors and still having active roles in TBAT’s day-to-day.
Q. What are you most proud of in TBAT’s 20 years?
I am most proud of the ethos my co-directors and I created – focusing on always delivering what’s best for the client. We’ve worked hard to ensure that all our team have the same passion for supporting UK business and continue to follow this ethos every day. TBAT are here to advise our clients on the best course for their business, whether that be accessing funding schemes via our help, or signposting them to partners or other organisations such as Local Enterprise Partnerships or advisory bodies, that can support them in addition to ourselves.
Q. What are your hopes for the next few years?
My hopes for the future of TBAT are that we continue to organically grow our team of experts and also our client base, to support even more businesses to fund their innovation!
I think the key to this is to maintain our positive brand and to continue providing our open and honest support; while also building trust in our ethos through our Partner Referral Scheme so we continue to be recommended by our partners to new businesses.
Finally, I anticipate we may be able to broaden our presence in other areas of the UK, by opening further satellite offices – perhaps in the North of England to start with.
