THE OUTSIDER

THE OUTSIDER is a gentleman (so he says) who owns an integrity business with a turnover exceeding £20m per year and employing 100 people, on a good day. It has offices in three countries and they all work and are all profitable. This, we think, qualifies him to be listened to. He kindly agreed to share some of his thoughts with us:

Matthews Integrity Hub: HEAD OFFICE: It looks like you’ve been pretty successful in the NDE and integrity business. What’s your secret of success?

The outsider: That’s an easy one; start a business and then work like you mean it, not as some kind of sideshow. When you friends suggest you go out with them for the evening, remind yourself you have 150 things to do first. Work hard and stay focussed; there are no short cuts.

HEAD OFFICE: How did you make your integrity services special?

The outsider: Not by acting like the other sheep I saw around me in the industry that’s for sure. When I asked them what they did, they responded ‘we sell high quality integrity services’ WOW, BIG DEAL, I thought; how could anyone possibly get excited about that? So I started offering services like this; ‘If you use our NDE services you’ll get a free initial vessel assessment then we’ll give you a guaranteed price for the full NDE survey and diagnosis of the results; there’ll be no open-ended day-rates and you won’t need another specialist to assess the results because we’ll do it for you’

‘And what was the result?’

‘The result was that I was miles ahead of my competitors who, even, when they saw what I was doing still didn’t get the message. They didn’t change their approach but instead all started price-cutting, competing away their profit margin in a self-justified race to the bottom.

‘So what are all your competitors doing now?’

‘Oh, still the same’

We welcome the contributions of The OUTSIDER to the MATTHEWS Integrity HUB:HEAD OFFFICE website on the NDE OFFICE webpage. Check out also his article; Plant integrity; are you breaking the law?