£75m investment for workforce management software firm

BigChange, a workforce management tech company, has secured a £75m investment from Great Hill Partners to fuel the next stage of its growth, thanks to a “blossoming partnership” with Zen Internet.

After seven years of growth, Leeds-headquartered BigChange needed a technology partner that could further inform and fuel its continuous improvement of availability (uptime), quality of service, security and, crucially, sustain its environment in Amazon Web Services (AWS) as technologies, threats and best practices evolve.

As the largest B Corp accredited technology service provider in the UK, Rochdale-based Zen was tasked with meeting the ambitions of a company which aims to achieve unicorn status.

The two companies worked to identify a workstream to prioritise and demonstrate business benefit with the AWS infrastructure.

BigChange chairman, Martin Port, said: “We’re delighted with the work Zen have done since we’ve partnered with them.

“Despite starting during the pandemic, their expertise and approach has led us through a turbulent time and enabled us to keep on track to achieve our ambitious goals and contributed to our new investment from Great Hill Partners.

“The reason we chose Zen is not just for their expertise though, but we share very similar views on running a company and believe in the power of authenticity.

“As businesses, I think we both try to be authentic in a way that attracts people, through sharing the same purpose and values.”

With continued pressure on companies to ensure they keep data secure, BigChange knew it needed a solution that had security at its heart.

As such, Zen brought together a number of tactical engineering activities and operational processes to align the attainment of the Cyber Essentials accreditation – a key consideration for BigChange to reassure customers of secure best practices and support new business acquisition in particular sectors.

The accreditation ensures companies are offering best security practices and requires organisations to apply aspects like patching within 14 days of updates being released by a vendor.

In addition, Zen deployed the AWS SecurityHub, a unified security and compliance service to manage security alerts and automate security checks.

The severity of vulnerabilities is automatically identified to enable Zen to address any high priority items promptly.

Security of applications and customer data is paramount for business continuity, data privacy and brand protection, so this work further strengthens BigChange’s authority in this space.

Richard Tang, founder and chairman of Zen Internet, added: “My discussions with Martin have been a real pleasure, sharing our views on growing a successful business and nurturing the right culture, as well as diving into the detail to ensure our partnership is just right to best support BigChange’s ambitious future plans.

“I am honoured that Martin and the BigChange team chose to put their trust in Zen.

“We have a very strong partnership that is already delivering first-class results, and I look forward to continuing to deliver on our partnership for many years to come.”

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