Owned and operated by Computing and BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, The UK IT Industry Awards are the industry’s largest and most prestigious event of the year. One of this year’s winners was Infinity Group, which took home the gong for Services Company of the Year. We talked to Rob Young, CEO and founder of the company, to find out more about their work.
The UK IT Industry Awards are a long-standing institution celebrating the cream of the technology crop. This year just shy of 1,000 IT professionals gathered in Battersea on the 13th November to applaud the winners in 30 different categories, covering everything from projects to people.
Rob founded Infinity Group in 2001, and has seen it through impressive growth over two decades. Today it is one of the UK’s leading Microsoft Partners, with exclusive Inner Circle membership and accreditation across core designations.
On a daily basis, Rob works alongside a team of senior experts to push innovative offerings for clients and help businesses embrace robust IT and technological infrastructure in an increasingly digital world.
Please provide some background on your company for our readers. What makes you different from other companies?
Since Infinity Group was formed over 20 years ago, our mission has always been to closely follow the latest technology and innovation in the market and make it as easy as possible for businesses to apply. We’re not afraid of doing things differently. This means helping our clients to think outside of the box and pursue growth, even if it feels out of reach.
We build long term relationships with our clients that provide ongoing support, even after a project has ended. We truly want to see each of them excel, so we leverage our internal expertise and exclusive Microsoft insights to help them streamline processes, breakaway from legacy tech and fuel performance.
What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?
We’ve been lucky to have achieved a lot of our goals in 2024. Firstly, we’ve made two acquisitions, helping us to take the next step in our growth plans. We’ve been able to successfully embed each of these acquisition into the Infinity Group vision and culture, allowing us to drive efficiency across our operations and improve the quality of service we deliver every day.
Alongside these acquisitions, we’ve been developing our own IP and offerings to deliver more structured services that better address our client’s challenges and needs. This has covered the areas of housing, pro services and utilities and energy. Into 2025, we hope to expand on this even further.
Why are events like the UK IT Industry Awards important to the IT industry?
IT is one of the most integral parts of any business, especially when more teams are working remotely or serving customers digitally. Due to this, it’s crucial that businesses work with IT partners that are reputable and can genuinely move them towards more efficient, agile processes.
The UK IT Industry Awards are a massive marker of trust. Not only do they give those in the industry a chance to celebrate their success, they let the wider world know who is excelling in key service areas and what they can offer clients. We’re delighted to have been named service company of the year, and we hope this shows people the excellent service they can expect from us.
What have been the biggest challenges of 2024 so far and how have you overcome them?
One of the most significant challenges we’ve faced and have seen our clients facing is embracing AI. There are two issues associated with this: firstly, knowing how to embed AI into your organisation in a way that genuinely drives performance. Secondly, understanding the risk AI can bring and knowing how to protect your IT against it.
As an organisation, we have had to understand how to implement AI effectively. This has involved researching secure tools and establishing an internal AI working group to test use cases and measure outcomes. Beyond this, we’ve kept a pulse on how AI is being used negatively by criminals to exacerbate cyber attacks, so we can shape our services to better help clients navigate the new threat landscape.
If you could give one piece of advice to a client considering AI, what would it be?
It’s very easy to get caught in the excitement around AI, but businesses often fall into the trap of using it blindly without getting true performance benefits. We recommend first trying to apply AI to genuine business problems. Spend time with your different teams understanding where they face the most repetitive administration and experimenting using AI to reduce this. Make a note of any results, including time saved, so you can build up a bank of areas where AI has truly helped across departments.
By approaching it in this manner, you can find ways to use AI that genuinely offer results, giving you better ROI.
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At what point should a business begin to consider the ethical implications of an AI-based project?
The ethical implications of AI should be considered from the very start. While there’s a lot of noise about AI’s benefits, that doesn’t mean there’s no risk. Security is a huge one that is often neglected.
We advise all our clients to classify and label their data, while using secure AI tools, to protect them against breaches. If you fail to do this from the start of the project, it may result in sensitive information being shared, which ultimately leads to you failing in your duty to customers and partners. Aim to have a framework in place early that covers security, ethics and compliance, so it’s a constant thread to the project.
What do you see as the main opportunities for the IT industry in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?
As well as being a challenge, we also see AI as a huge opportunity for IT. At a time where many businesses are facing an IT skills shortage, AI can automate core tasks and ease the burden. However, it’s crucial to utilise AI responsibly. So, we intend to shape our services to better help businesses prepare their data and processes for AI, and create an AI strategy that delivers genuine benefits.
On top of this, we cannot ignore the rising costs businesses face, especially in line with the latest government budget. Being able to reduce costs through streamlined IT processes is crucial for survival. The right tech, embedded efficiently, can ensure businesses overcome cost concerns and uncertainty in this time - and we endeavour to help them find this.
Talk to us about diversity and its importance. Where do you see the benefit for businesses that take EDI seriously?
We’re proud to be a diverse organisation, and this is something we work on constantly to improve. We believe having people across backgrounds and experiences enables us to be more creative, encompass more perspectives and find better solutions to challenges.
Great IT should futureproof your business, and that can only happen with a deeper understanding of the wider world and higher quality ideas. This allows you to prevent biases in technology and create solutions that are beneficial for more people. Organisations that take EDI seriously as more likely to achieve this than those who do not.
What advice would you give to a company considering entering the 2025 Awards?
We would simply say: go for it! When we applied, we knew we had worked hard to deliver the best possible service for our clients and build up our organisation. That enabled us to talk passionately about why we were the services company of the year, with strong evidence to prove it. And when we won, it felt like a true celebration of our teams’ efforts.
If you know you are excelling in your field and want to be recognised for it, entering the awards is your chance to prove it.
