Roads to Resilience

Case study: The Technology Partnership

Introduction

The Technology Partnership (TTP) was formed in 1987 as a technology and product development company with a vision to “ work in partnership with our clients to bring new products to market, creating new business from advances in technology ” 1 . The Partnership was founded by a group of 30 investor employees, all of whom had previously worked for PA Technology, part of the PA Consulting Group. TTP now operates in a number of diverse technology areas, including industrial and consumer products, micro devices, medical and life sciences technology, and electronics. The company’s core offering is a contract R&D service – it can rapidly solve challenging technology problems, or develop new products on behalf of its clients. Developing technology and new products requires a broad range of scientific, engineering and business capabilities and TTP is now Europe’s leading independent product development company, typically serving 440 clients per year. TTP is still owned by the employees and is located close to Cambridge. The company employs around 315 staff and in 2012 had a turnover of £39 million. The company needs to deal with a fast-moving business environment, and a broad range of technology, ranging from biosensors to wireless security technology, depending on the sector in which the client company is active. TTP is often asked to help with projects where the client’s own engineers are overstretched and so the ability to respond rapidly to new customer projects is essential. This means that TTP operates with a ‘low forward workload’ to ensure there is available capacity to respond fast, although this also means that significant amounts of its future income stream are always uncertain. There is also a high degree of uncertainty in each of the 70-80 technology and product development projects that TTP are typically working on at any given time. TTP manages commercial risk within projects through contracts, in which “ the basic model is fees for time ” (Finance Director). In this approach, clients retain ownership of the development risk, but know that they are working with the highly capable TTP team, which has extensive experience of solving technology-related issues quickly and effectively. Although contract R&D is the primary mode of operation, with development work being paid for by clients, some internally-funded projects are conducted, which help build even stronger technological capabilities within TTP. Technological capabilities are important and these are based on the knowledge of the team of scientists and engineers. It is recognised at TTP, however, that technological expertise needs to be matched with excellent communication with the client and management of their expectations. So there is a keen focus on establishing and maintaining good client relationships. “ Key features of relationship management are continuity and openness. Thus the project leader and key members of the project team will be well known to the client who they will meet regularly. Key decisions will be discussed with the key client contact, so that there are no surprises ” (Chairman). The company often takes on particularly challenging projects because, when the client contacts TTP, it means that the project has “ got to be really hard … so you need good people to do it ” (Managing Director). The strategy of focusing on difficult technological challenges, establishing excellent client relationships, and the company’s reputation for quality enables TTP to apply a premium pricing strategy.

1 See http://www.ttp.com/

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Roads to Resilience: Building dynamic approaches to risk to achieve future success