20 01732 759725 setting up of the entirely WWCS-funded Sheffield operation. “The Sheffield office goes live on September 1. My former commercial director, Ryan Connolly, who worked with me for many years, has agreed to take over as Sheffield Branch Managing Director on September 1. To help me on the operational side in London, Ben Welton is coming across from Sharps to be the London Branch Managing Director, starting on September 7. In addition, we have a new Operations Director, Janine Chattenton, also from Sharps, starting in London in mid-September.” Mirror image Muscroft plans to run Sheffield as a mirror image of WWCS’s London operation and is looking to take advantage of his contacts and connections and the significant economic opportunities in the north to create the biggest tech team in the area. “I have a vision for how our technical offering should look in Sheffield, built on the successes of what we’ve been able to achieve in London. We’ve got our first technical recruits starting in Sheffield in September and we’ll continue to build over the coming months,” he says. While the plan is to have the same technical resources in Sheffield that WWCS has in London, Muscroft concedes that this won’t happen overnight. “One of the challenges we’ve got is to grow the client base alongside the technical resources we have. We know it’s a chicken and egg scenario. We have to be able to afford the people that come in; equally, we must have good skills and good people in place for clients to trust us. The messaging we’re going to be putting out from September is that we are a techfocused, tech-first company that clients can trust. The faster we grow Sheffield, the faster we’re going to be able to invest in people and skills there.” A tremendous opportunity Muscroft is bullish about achieving this balance, describing Sheffield as ‘a tremendous opportunity for WWCS’. “We’ve got a forward-thinking council and a forward-thinking local mayor. South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, financial expertise and someone with operational and people expertise, and those individuals have helped shape the direction of the company and the growth we’re trying to achieve,” explains Muscroft. “In the last 12 months, we’ve been able to consolidate what we have; we’ve been able to recruit some really good people; we’ve been able to improve our technical offering; and we’ve been able to roll out a new security service that we believe is incredibly advanced for an MSP.” That hard work is already bearing fruit, with a trebling of year-on-year profit in the last 12 months enabling the London managed service provider WWCS is opening a northern office in Sheffield with the intention of building ‘the biggest tech team in the region’ – and has assembled a highly experienced team to do so. The driving force is Chris Muscroft, who after leaving Highlander following its acquisition by Fluid One in 2023, took up a non-executive role at WWCS which he had come to know while serving on the council of Ingram Micro’s global partner alliance Trust X. Described by Muscroft as ‘incredibly stable’, WWCS is a family business, based in North London, with around 40 employees, mostly in technical roles; circa £4 million in annual turnover; and about 120 southern-based clients, of which around 75% are SMEs and 25% enterprise and public sector organisations. WWCS was founded in 1983 by Neil and Simone Lester, the parents of current CEO Marc Lester, who has been working at the company for 25 years and running it since 2009. He recruited Muscroft to provide guidance on strategy, but that role quickly changed. “Much to my surprise, I started getting involved more in the day-to-day operations of the company rather than just offering strategic guidance,” explains Muscroft. “I took over as Chairman three years ago, and as Group MD in November last year, with a view to stabilising and growing what we’ve got in London, before at some point going back to a ‘proper’ Chairman’s role.” He points out that while WWCS has matured into an incredibly successful MSP, guided by Marc’s persistence, work ethic and determination to succeed, its structures and processes were fragmented and were acting as a brake on its ambitions. Removing those constraints and laying the ground for growth, phase one of the company’s first five-year plan, was essential if WWCS was to meet the timeline for its second and third phases, the opening of a Sheffield office and expansion into Europe. “One of the things Marc did when I joined WWCS as Chairman was to put together a non-exec board to help with guidance. We brought in somebody with On September 1, London-based MSP WWCS is extending its reach to the north of England with the opening of an office in Sheffield Sheffield calling MSPs Chris Muscroft Marc Lester
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