Chief Executive Officer, Kainos Group
Driving Ambition: Kainos
This episode of finnCap’s Driving Ambition Film Series sees broadcaster Rajan Datar and Brendan Mooney, CEO of Kainos, jump in the back of a black cab to speak about Kainos’ incredible rise from a university incubator to global software player, why it made the move to partner in the US and how to retain grads and a graduate incubator culture around the world.
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About Brendan Mooney
Brendan Mooney, CEO of Kainos, discussed the company's origins and growth in a 2019 interview, noting that it began with Queen's University supplying graduates to Fujitsu for complex software projects, including work on the Oyster card and BT's fixed-line network. He described Kainos' focus on understanding customer needs, stating that "generally large companies tend to be very myopic about the customer need" and that demonstrating value to customers is key to competing. Mooney also addressed the UK healthcare system's reliance on paper, saying "the biggest purchaser of fax machines in the world is the NHS" and that Kainos helps remove paper from hospital care processes. In a 2017 interview, Mooney outlined Kainos' two divisions: Digital Services, which builds digital platforms for large clients and implements Workday software, and Digital Platforms, which includes healthcare products like EMR and Integrated Care. He noted growth opportunities in Germany, Benelux, Australia, and the US, and said the company's R&D expenditure was £4.2 million. Mooney highlighted a low attrition rate of 6% and emphasized that key performance indicators include contract wins in new regions and the adoption of products like Smart, which he expected to reach 100 clients.
Transcript (13 segments)
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Raj0:03
Welcome to FinCap's Driving Ambition web series and podcast. I'm Raj, and over the next few weeks I'll be touring the country in an all-electric black cab visiting an array of leading UK plc small and medium sized enterprises all selected from FinCap's Ambition Nation listed 50. I'll be speaking to CEOs and business leaders to find out what are the key factors that drove their success, what was that company's unique journey, because this is Ambition Nation.
Brendon, let's talk first about how the
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Brendan Mooney0:48
Company started. At the very start, we had Queen's supplying these great graduates to the company. You had, for example, a big need to do complex software projects for their customers, and it was a perfect match. So we did big projects for Fujitsu. We did a self-service, the Underground Oyster card, paper card is replaced by us, and for BT, calls made on a fixed line network were all processed by our software. This is back in the early days. Yeah, so big complex projects, and that's kind of a theme today, but what we do for our customers has changed.
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Raj1:21
Let's look at the bigger projects that you do with certain customers. I mean, government is a big customer of yours, and what about healthcare and what about the NHS? Going digital, moving from paper.
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Brendan Mooney1:32
I'd say the thing that people never talk about is that the healthcare system in the UK still is heavily dependent on paper. So the biggest purchaser of fax machines in the world is the NHS, and they have thousands of them currently. And in the end, yes, and it's not that it's a problem in that paper makes things more inefficient. So it takes longer to get information from A to B, it's not only based on physical. So in the case of hospitals in the UK, we help remove paper from the care process, so digitized through digital records delivered electronically at the point of care, helping better outcomes for patients and efficiency for clinical and nursing staff. I can't just make it all work more efficiently.
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Raj2:13
Pinpoint say three key values that you and the company hold, what would they be, and could you perhaps illustrate that?
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Brendan Mooney2:22
For me, across the corporation, collaboration is very important and key. So we have to help colleagues because we have to have our customers be successful. And sometimes that means that we have to help them be self-sufficient, which is strange for a supplier to say about their customers. But that could be, you know, the right thing for them. Respect is very important, and then creativity is key as well. I mean, we are tasked by our customers to solve problems, so we should put that in a really creative way. So we're also, by again collaborating, because you never have all the good ideas just for yourself. You have to, it's been, you know, that almost a team is bigger as well. We talk about honesty more to do with giving feedback and in terms of the collaboration with customers.
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Raj3:04
Customers. I mean, the impression might be that you know you're a remote company just dealing with IT and that you have no human contact at all and all that stuff. How important is that? Is that the customer?
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Brendan Mooney3:14
Customer. I mean, so we use a methodology called agile, you know, things like scrum teams and sprints as part of that as well. But I think you know what that really means is you have to understand exactly why somebody is using your software. So, um, the passport office. Most people renew their passport by going to the post office to get a form, they come home, we fill the form, submit it, then the passport. That's the old way of doing it. But we had to understand what was going on. We actually were in post offices, we were stopping people leaving and we were asking them, 'You've got three passport forms in your hand, why are you doing that?' They would say, 'Well, I'd say, and stop, I'm doing just for me, I think it looks complicated, it's four pages, I've taken a couple of extra copies just to make sure I get it right.' Leave with all, I care? They applied that a quarter of all paper applications that received the passport office. How many errors? So they also, you're using any? Okay, so this is an error process.
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Raj4:05
Let's talk about listing. And so the IPO decision. I mean, why do you make that decision?
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Brendan Mooney4:11
So we're four years on the market. We listed June 2015. And I guess their motivations were pretty straightforward. We were excited by the markets we're in, we saw high growth, we saw long-term market, we saw an opportunity to grow in those markets as well. So very excited about the future. At the same time, as a private company, we had Queen's as a shareholder, and they've been incredibly patient. They had loaned over 30 years and never seen any return. You're this age, had 85 employees, they shares as well, and again they had borrowed money, mortgages or cars to buy that question. So we felt it was important to be able to create an opportunity for any of them to see some return on that investment. So we were not doing large projects and the competition were big names. Everywhere we felt that one of the questions people would say because as a private company you're gonna get so, you know, you get so well then kind of what, you know, and we wanted to kind of really make it even though we were right for long-term.
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Raj5:18
I just wanted to ask you, I mean, out there in this world that you're working, your company works in, there's some big players, huge companies, and you are beating them in certain areas, and you started off as a company that was partly just the university department. How do you feel about that?
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Brendan Mooney5:37
I think that we think of it the customer first and foremost. So what do they need? And just because you've a bigger name doesn't mean they understand that need. You have to go out and generally large companies tend to be very myopic about the customer need. If you're able to demonstrate value to customers, higher values, I take it, then you will be in the competition. So we have to make sure that we continue to focus really strongly on the customer.