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About:
Stephen combines wide senior management experience with a background in science and years of experience of implementing IT projects fro SME companies.

"I set up Denaploy because I believed (asnd still do) that the rapid evolution of IT technology was causing a significant disruption to traditional supply chain relationships and that opens opportunities for aggressive companies to carve out new areas of commercial advantage."

He offers a safe pair of hands that can combine the strategic commercial vision with the people skills and the mastery of technical detail necessary to deliver these projects.

In His own words

“For the last 13 years we at Denaploy have been working at understanding how to make the Internet work for business.  Not just the basic tools that make it possible – servers, databases, graphic design, search engines email etc; but also the business strategies that can bring success and the transition difficulties that all companies face in implementing new ways of working.

I get a real kick out of discovering how to do things differently and overcoming the obstacles to making it work. If that sometimes means ignoring the conventional wisdom of the time or taking a risk, then I am prepared to put my money where my mouth is, and share the risk.

Ecommerce is now an established part of any retail business plan and if it comes to the choice between opening a new shop on even the best of high streets, or opening an ecommerce web presence that can sell to the world – the choice is a no-brainer.    Since the costs are roughly comparable and the risks of getting locked into long leases is currently getting worse – I foresee ecommerce as one of the great winners of the current downturn.

Working closely on the day to day development of these businesses keeps us constantly in touch with the developments in the industry and the market – www.newsstand.co.uk, www.fish4flies.com,  www.treasureislandtoys.co.uk etc

The knowledge industry is another area that has struggled to cope with the changed opportunities imposed on it by the Internet. The balance between being useful and giving away the crown jewels for free is always difficult and selling the value of what you have to a sceptical world can have its moments. www.grahambishop.com is the purest example of how this can work and grow really big.

And then there are the services that are just new. Our O&M manual service is a completely new way of delivering a product that has been a legal requirement for the building industry for years, but which has always been a problem to deliver. It has been very exciting creating a completely new way of delivering the service using the IT tools that are commonly available to everybody, and making it work. http://www.denaploy.co.uk/manuals .

This is all a team effort in which everybody has to play their part.  An over-arching focus on meeting our clients requirements allied to a constant effort to keep abreast of the latest technical development and finding ways of extracting value from them.  Our thanks go to not only the immediate team of those working in Denaploy, but to the growing number of partners that deliver specialist services so we can bring it all together and make it work.”

Prior to Denaploy

Stephen has always been torn between his passion for science and his natural business interests.  Having taken a Physics degree at Imperial College London and an MBA at the ManchesterBusinessSchool, he followed a conventional career through ICI, Bell and Howell and the Expamet Group in various posts in Sales, International Marketing, Corporate Strategy, Operations Management and as Chief Executive.

In 1990 he moved from London to St Leonards and joined Nik Askaroff in building EMC, and a new career in consultancy. Initially this was mainly in the area of financial trouble shooting and corporate turnaround. But the dramatic rise in the importance of IT in business success, created a natural opportunity for the combination of both strands of Stephen’s life.