This month we’re celebrating our 18th birthday. That’s right – Dial A Geek is of age!
We wanted to create something fun to spread the word about our experience in the industry. We asked ourselves – what if Dial A Geek were a person? Here’s what we could do today, if we were human:
Our journey has been an exciting one. Dial A Geek was first started in the kitchen of Gildas Jones, who wanted to bring accessible and friendly IT support to small businesses in Bristol.
Back then, it was just him and his laptop – and the work he’d do was mostly the break-fix model. A customer would dial a geek, let them know what malfunctioned, the geek would solve the issue and not hear back from the customer until something else went wrong.
Then came some of the first big milestones:
- Getting a scooter and creating our iconic logo.
- Hiring Gildas’ first employee.
- Hiring an office manager and moving to an office space at the Fire Station.
- First proper holiday away, when Gildas left the business in the hands of his employees.
- Creating 3 support plan packages that summed up most of our service.
- Hiring our first apprentice, Joe.
The next big milestone came when we hired Yusra Shaeik as our second apprentice (although we didn’t know what it would lead to at the time!). Since accidentally wiping a PC clean in her job interview, Yusra has come a long way, including a whole range of positions at Dial A Geek, two apprenticeship awards (apprentice of the year in technology and an overall apprentice of 2020!), and has become Dial A Geek’s Technical Director… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The next big step for us was moving away from the break-fix model and becoming a Manage Service Provider. We decided to offer a full, comprehensive, IT management plan called ‘Protect & Grow’ and completely give up on providing ad-hoc support. This decision allowed us to take full responsibility for our clients’ systems and security.
Another milestone was choosing a specialism in cyber security compliance and reworking Protect & Grow so that the three plans are centred around the different levels of cyber security compliance. Rather than having cyber security as an optional add-on, like many other companies do, we wanted to offer transparent pricing and clearly state that security is crucial in the current climate.
Appointing Yusra as a Technical Director has helped us reach multiple cyber-related goals. We became a Cyber Essentials Plus and IASME Cyber Assurance certification body. We became National Cyber Security Centre’s Assured Provider. We further refined our offering.
In the meantime, we have looked at our environmental and social impact and goals. This is something we have always deeply cared about, but we wanted to find a proper framework and to demonstrate our commitment to good causes. Thanks to our Marketing Manager, Nina Sawicka, we became a certified B Corporation.
This year our hard work was rewarded by multiple business awards shortlisting us, and finally by winning SPARKies awards as the Best Cyber Company.
Our journey up to date has been an exciting one, we have experience sustained growth, we have stayed on top of the newest tech trends, we have worked with over 1000 businesses in Bristol and across the UK, we worked with some fabulous people, including a whole range of apprentices and a great team of fully-grown IT technicians. We are excited for the future – all of our Geeks are constantly training up, the company is always pursuing a new cert, and we are getting to work with bigger and bigger clients.
Happy birthday to us – and let’s hope we always get to work with the amazing team and clients we’ve been lucky to work with so far!
