11:36am Tuesday 31st March 2009
By Sam Thomson »
IT’S NOT a well known fact, but there are Mounties patrolling the streets of Sussex.
They may not be dressed in tan-coloured hats, snazzy red jackets or faintly ridiculous black pantaloons, but just like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, “they always get their man”.
(If, of course, you substitute “man” for “important IT projects and support expertly delivered to dozens of high-profile clients”.) Mounties are the affectionate names given to the hundreds of graduate students recruited by hugely successful IT services firm FDM Group, based in Trafalgar Place, Brighton.
The company has grown from a one-man-band into an internationally renowned brand with offices in some of the world’s most important financial centres.
It works for a wealth of high-profile clients including the BBC, Natwest, HSBC, BskyB and Virgin.
Lately it has been festooned with garlands and gongs. FDM took home the Sussex Company of the Year prize at the most recent Sussex Business Awards and has just been named the Institute of IT Training’s Training Department of the Year.
It has also achieved the rare feat of being named in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100, which ranks Britain’s fastest growing privately held companies by sales growth, for four years in a row.
The company was started in 1990 by Rod Flavell, who set up in the attic of his home in Bishopstone, near Seaford, with just a single computer and a telephone line.
Mr Flavell’s company, FDI, was simply an IT recruitment company and grew steadily until 1996, when it merged with Mountfield Software, an IT training company based in Mountfield, near Robertsbridge.
This was when Mr Flavell had his eureka moment, according to Sheila Flavell, FDM’s global services director.
She said: “Rod came up with the idea of taking on IT and numerical science graduates and training them before making them permanent members of staff.
“The process is unique in the UK and is completely fundamental to FDM’s success.”
Trainees at Mountfield were affectionately known as Mounties and the name has stuck.
Each Mountie is taken on by FDM for six months for no salary initially, although the training they receive is worth about £20,000 and is equivalent to a Master’s degree.
Mrs Flavell said: “Once they have finished we guarantee them a job.
“We will find them employment with one of 180 clients across the globe.
You can see why we’re popular.”
In fact more than 5,000 students applied for positions at FDM for this year’s intake.
The company plans to recruit 300 Mounties, the equivalent of 2% of all the numerical science graduates studying at British universities.
Mrs Flavell, who is married to Rod, said: “To date we have had more than 1,500 Mounties pass through the company. The way it tends to go is that graduates will stay with us for about two years then progress on their own.
“Some even become our clients.”
Unsurprisingly, competition to become one of FDM’s Mounties is fierce.
Mrs Flavell said: “The five services we offer are testing, application support, client training, infrastructure support and consultancy.
“Each of these requires a different kind of person but the one thing everyone needs, apart from an aptitude for IT of course, is good communication skills.
“It is widely recognised in the technology marketplace that these are as important as IT skills.
We are no longer looking for anoraks.”
About 60% of FDM’s clients are in the world of finance and to satisfy their demands over the years the company has expanded into London, Manchester, Zurich, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and New York.
Mrs Flavell said there were plans in place to open a new office in another global financial centre, although she remained tight-lipped about the exact destination.
With all the turmoil in the sector due to the credit crunch, it may seem worrying for a company to rely so heavily on finance for its customer base.
But because of the breadth of FDM’s services and its competitiveness, Mrs Flavell is confident about the firm’s future growth.
She said: “We have just published our annual report and we had a record year in 2008.”