Our Story: IT Naturally

A message from our CEOs

When we started IT Naturally in 2019, we knew we wanted to create a different type of Managed Service Provider (MSP), one that cared about its people, truly owned every situation and used tech as a force for good.

Our journey has been incredible, we’ve become B Corp Certified, grown rapidly (we now have more than 50 employees) and have a high employee satisfaction score.

We’d love you to read more of our story below.

We believe that our customers really should “Enjoy not talking about IT”, because when we’re your MSP it just works.

Julie and Richard

IT Naturally was born in the wake of the Thomas Cook collapse in 2019.

Julie, who was Head of IT Infrastructure Delivery at the Group, found herself at a crossroads when the company went into administration.

But as one door closed, another opened.

Condor, an airline under the Thomas Cook Group, knew it had to strike out on its own to survive. They approached Julie with a bold request: to set up a company that would take over their IT infrastructure services.

Knowing that success required the right support, Julie approached Richard, her Thomas Cook colleague, to be her business partner and Co-CEO, and together they assembled a leadership team.

In less than a month, IT Naturally was officially registered with Companies House.

Within three months, a team of experts were in place. There had been such a talented team of IT infrastructure specialists and IT service delivery experts at Thomas Cook, who were now out of work, it was a great opportunity for everyone.

Condor Airlines became IT Naturally’s first client, and their service went live on 21st January 2020.

Julie & Richard quickly set the ball rolling to launch a business that could deliver the ability and scale of a large enterprise.

From the very beginning, the goal was ambitious: to seamlessly take over Condor’s fragile IT infrastructure, keeping everything running smoothly, and then to downsize it from supporting 23,000 employees to 5,000 – all without a hitch.

But within 2 months, March 2020 we all know what happened: the world changed. The COVID-19 pandemic struck, and lockdown sent everyone home. But that didn’t slow the company down. In fact, we thrived.

We beat the odds to grow rapidly during COVID, taking on 3 new customers, employing 28 people and gaining 3 certifications, ISO 9001:2015, ISO 27001:2013 and Cyber Essentials.

In 2021, we became Investors in People gaining Silver on our first attempt! We were delighted, it was then that we truly started our sustainability journey.

We began measuring, reducing, and offsetting our carbon footprint, a practice we now follow annually. We chose 2 charities to donate 1% of our pre-tax profit too – and we still do.

In 2022, we continued to grow, restructuring our Leadership Team and we wanted to find a certification that truly reflected our way of working, and when we found B Corp™, we knew it was the perfect fit. After a rigorous process and a long wait, we were thrilled to receive our B Corp certification in May 2023.

Of course, our story wouldn’t be real if we didn’t mention any of the tough times.

We seemed to be going from strength to strength and were initially delighted to grow by 50% but soon realised that we had grown too quickly to maintain our people-first ethos.

So, on went the brakes and a look at our strategy, we focussed on standardising our process and set a more realistic growth target of 25% to grow sustainably with our team’s wellbeing at the forefront.

As we navigated this period, we moved to our new home at Lynchwood Park, went through a brand evolution to better reflect who we are and were thrilled to win Employer of the Year at the Growing Business Awards 2023.

2024 hasn’t been a quiet one either!

We continue to work towards our B Corp re-certification in 2026, our focus is now on our suppliers and customers to ensure we are all aligned. We’ve taken even more steps to tell our story and invested in a company video all of course, whilst delivering IT that just works, receiving (amazing) customer satisfaction scores of 90+ and becoming finalists in the Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards.

As we celebrate our 5th birthday, we are a 50-strong team, a proud B Corp changing the face of the MSP industry by putting people and the planet first.

And we are super excited about the next 5 years.

To be continued…