Rinaldo De Paolis (Novata Solutions)
The 'ARN spotlight on' series explores partners operating in the local channel landscape right around the country, from Cape York to Hobart, Byron Bay to Fremantle and beyond. In this edition, we focus on Western Australia and Perth-based managed service provider (MSP) and consultancy Novata Solutions.
No matter how long you’ve been trading, all businesses face their fair share of trials and tribulations, and Novata Solutions has managed to face and overcome the challenges in their way in just three and a half years.
Starting from square one
Novata's story began relatively recently with managing director Rinaldo De Paolis starting up the consultancy in 2016, where he planned to run as a standalone consultant. However, he quickly found the demand was just too much for one person.
“We had to grow, so within the first year or so, we had seven full-time FTEs (full-time employees), offices located in the CBD and a whole pile of clients that were demanding more and more of our services,” De Paolis said.
“It was a fortuitous time to start the business back then. It was just opportune.”
At the start, the business’s main focus was on assisting aged care and not-for-profit organisations, as De Paolis wanted to feel like he was making a difference – by helping out businesses that strived to make a difference in their local communities, he felt he could give back to society by compounding on that assistance.
Fast forward to today and Novata Solutions has widened its scope – it’s now working with large aged care providers that are in Western Australia, as well as those based the east coast and nation-wide.
The business is also tackling projects in engineering and mining verticals, with De Paolis labelling the latter industry as “interesting”.
“We never purposely went out to look for mining clients because we were very conscious that as commodity prices rise, everything's good, but the moment commodity prices drop, it can be quite challenging,” he said.
“However, the mining clients that we have now in engineering are ranked among some of West Australia's largest, with doing some work for Fortescue Metals Group, Citic Pacific Mining [and] Independence Group, just to name a few.”
The decision to start in Perth came from where De Paolis was based at the time, as this is where he has spent most of his career in IT.
However, like many businesses in IT, Novata Solutions isn’t tied down to one area – some of the firm’s first major clients were up in Geraldton, down in Albany and all the way over in Tasmania.
Three and a half years later since opening its doors, the business has grown over 25 per cent year-on-year in both revenues and headcount, standing strong with 17 full-time employees.
The pains and gains
In this time, one big win for Novata was a deal with Monadelphous, an engineering group based in Perth, to provide a workforce management application and were up against several big players in the market, De Paolis said.
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