Peter Gradwell

About Dr Peter Gradwell

 

 

My experience is the journey of a small communications business from student flat where we built websites, into a widely respected telecoms provider supporting over 20,000 UK small businesses, directly and via over 300 local IT channel partners.

My key skill is product design to solve broken process. I look at the world and ask "how can that work better" and was taught from a young age to decompose systems into their component parts and restructure the process to get a better outcome. 

When you run a business you touch every aspect, but specifically I managed:

  • Customer Services & Support
  • Internal Business Systems and Corporate IT
  • Software Development and 24x7 Technical Operations
  • All of the financial & legal aspects of company ownership, with external investors
  • On average I had a team of 50, with 5 direct reports

Ways I can help:

  • Provide advice to get your start-up going, especially if you need to implement some tech.
  • Help you prepare to talk to venture capital firms.
  • Move an established business forward - perhaps by sense checking an IT strategy, moving some or all of your business to the Cloud - e.g implementing Office365, good quality wifi, secure VPNs, etc. 
  • Implement a new accounting system/CRM (Xero, Netsuite, Salesforce, Hubspot).
  • Do a feasibility study for your next project.  (Also implementation plan, problem analysis, 1st cut process model etc).
  • Do a strategy study for your business.

Technical Skills

  • Detailed technical knowledge of agile software development in PHP, Perl and Java;
  • JIRA/Confluence suite for most of my planning & management.
  • I also have wide experience in Infrastructure: datacentres, HPE servers & 3PAR storage.
  • Networking for internet & broadband/fibre service providers, telecoms and mobile, as well as web hosting.
  • Cloud services, primarily Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
  • Business systems: Office365, GSuite, Salesforce, Netsuite, Zuora, Xero. I am comfortable across Microsoft, Apple and Opensource environments. 

Other Interests

I have a strong awareness of legal, financial & regulatory matters, including procurement, recruitment, HR, financial audit, due diligence, information security and working with private equity.

Additionally, I have a strong interest in industry and regulatory affairs and I am (and have been) part of a number of industry groups helping formulate Government & Regulatory policy on the Internet & domain names, Enum, 999 access, telephone number portability, lawful intercept and ultrafast broadband.

Peter is an energetic and hardworking leader; a good communicator who is able to inspire technical and non-technical colleagues; and who is able to comprehensively deliver across a wide brief.

The future!

As of May 2020, I left my full time role within Gradwell Communications Ltd (the business is majority owned by Private Equity – Chiltern Capital) and I am:

  • Providing consultancy services to small businesses via this new venture, Ystwyth Consulting Limited.
  • Develop & growing a new product business - IQ Mobile Limited,  consumer and business MVNO on the EE network offering Sim Only contracts to customers.