Panaseer: A Case Study of an SME in the UK Cybersecurity Market

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes Panaseer, a UK cybersecurity SME.

MANAGING SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED ENTERPRISES
1 | P a g e

Executive summary
The present report analyses the start-up process and nature of the small and medium sized
business along with the type of entrepreneurship required for the business. For this process, a
SME of the UK is selected in this report that provides cyber-security solutions to the customers.
The business concept of the business and type of services provided by the business is analyzed.
The sources and core competences of the bushiness to gain competitive advantage are analyzed
here. The challenges of the SMEs faced to provide flawless services are evaluated in this report
and it is identified that these challenges increases employee workload and customer
dissatisfaction. The growth and development strategy of the company is analysed to improve
services.
2 | P a g e

Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................4
2. Findings.......................................................................................................................................6
2.1 Analysis.....................................................................................................................................9
3. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................13
4. Recommendations......................................................................................................................14
References and Bibliography.........................................................................................................16
3 | P a g e

1. Introduction
SME or small and medium enterprises are made with the enterprises that have employees not
more than 250 employees and annual turnover does not exceed 50 million Euros as per European
rule. According to the Companies Act 2006 of the UK, the turnover of the SMEs does not have
to more than £6.5million. In addition to it, balance sheet is not more than £3.26 million and does
not have more than 50 employees (www.towergate insurance.co.uk, 2019). It has been identified
that there have been 5.7 million SMEs in the UK in 2018 that has covered more than 99% of the
UK businesses in which 5.4 million are micro businesses. Entrepreneurs are the individuals who
establish and run a small business after assuming the risks and profit of the business. SMEs and
entrepreneurs improve economy of the UK as total employment in SMEs has been 16.3 million
in 2018.
In this report, an IT company of the UK namely Panaseer is selected that provides cyber security
in software development services to the customers. The company has 48 employees across 2
locations of the UK. Total funding of the company has been $12.3 million and latest funding size
has been $10 million (panaseer.com, 2019). The company was founded in 2014 and is a small
company of the UK. The founder and CEO of the company is Nik Whitfield who is a technology
entrepreneur. Other Board of directors is Albert Plattner and James Doggett.
Figure 1: Growth of the employees of Panaseer
(Source: panaseer.com, 2019)
4 | P a g e

Aim and objectives of the report
Aim:
The aim of the report is to identify the nature of SMEs of the UK and their growth opportunities
in the market.
Objectives:
1. To identify the nature of entrepreneur behind the venture of SMEs
2. To determine the start-up process of the SMEs
3. To evaluate the current level demand competitive environment of the SME
4. To identify the challenges faced by the company to manage their business
5. To point out the growth and development strategies and opportunities for SME
In this report, primary qualitative data has been collected from the entrepreneur to determine the
issues faced by Panaseer and their growth opportunities in the UK market.
5 | P a g e

2. Findings
In the primary qualitative data analysis, interview of the entrepreneur or CEO of Panaseer, Nik
Whitfield based on the open-ended questionnaire to determine their issues in the market. It also
includes the challenges faced by the companies to provide effective services to the customers as
well as the growth opportunities of the company to improve the services.
The result of primary qualitative data collection is presented here,
Q1. What is the start-up process of your business and do you think the type of
entrepreneur followed by you is effective for business?
As per the opinion of the CEO of the business, he has conducted lots of research to determine the
necessity of creating a cyber security platform for the customers. The entrepreneur has
determined the round of funding and the company has brought total funding of $15.5 million
over four rounds for the start-up in 2014. The company has secured $10 million in Series a
finding. Funding round of the company has led by Evolution Equity Partners along with some
investors such as Albion Capital, Paladin Capital Group, Notion Capital and Wilton Ventures.
He has raised $2.25 million initially through syndicated seed-investment round that has been
eased because of co-founder of the company, Albert Platter.
Knowledge and experiences of the entrepreneurs is required for establishing business
(Georgiadis and Pitelis, 2016). It is identified from the responses of Nik Whitfield that he has
been a technical entrepreneur of the business and he has applied his knowledge of social
network, cyber security knowledge to develop cyber security platform for the employees. As the
CEO is from technology background and he has led BAE’s cyber security business, Cyber
Reveal, he has come up with the concept of Panaseer to create advanced technology platform
mainly for the banking sector.
Q2. Are the services of your business effective to gain competitive advantage in the
market?
According to the entrepreneur, the company provides cyber security solutions to the customers
using big data technology. The company has also applied analytics to security and organisational
business data to improve security of the network of the companies. Panaseer platform provides
6 | P a g e

comprehensive assessment of risks and vulnerabilities of the websites and utilise high-scale
analytics with the help of security tools.
As the platform of Panaseer provides full visibility of cyber hygiene performance of the
customers along with the risks stratus, it is easy for them to identify and mitigate the threats.
Similarly, the company uses box analysis for some type of security threats. The special function
includes smart device inventory, patch management, endpoint protection, vulnerability
management as well as privileged access management. Therefore, the security services empower
CISO to take best value actions and use single source of trusted data to work more efficiently.
According to the CEO, Panaseer platform is different as it automatically analyse data from
myriad of security technologies that is combined with HR and IT data and uses proprietary
algorithm. It helps business to perform entity resolution that creates accurate view of assets.
Risks are described through a common security framework like NIST. Therefore, Cyber security
system of the company helps them to gain competitive advantage in the market.
Q3. What is the current level of demand and customer satisfaction of your organisation?
Innovation in business and marketing can increase demand and customer satisfaction for SMEs
(Scuotto et al., 2017). Demand of the services of Panaseer in high in the UK as innovation in
technology is observed for the company. The company has also got new founder in the UK
namely Cisco Investors. As per the opinion of the entrepreneur, Nik Whitfield, most of the
organizations do not have visibility to identify the risks that is not effective to identify assets of
an organisation. Lack of complete and trustworthy data on security control coverage is identified
in those organisations. On the other hand, Panaseer provides control coverage page across
critical security areas that is integrated by comparing internal compliance policies based on
Smart Inventory. The users can also gain access of the Business Process Management such as
Service Level Agreement (SLA), Key Risk Indicators (KRI) and Key Performance Indicator
(KPI) in security control management layer of Panaseer.
It is also identified from the responses of the CEO that data processing and smart resolution
engine segregate and correlate data automatically. The customers of the company have observed
rapid improvement in the security posture after using Panaseer platform. It improves CMDB
quality. End-to-end networking solutions covers customer premise equipment, facilities
management services and the customer can enjoy the benefits of Virtual Private Network, VPN.
The services that are provided by the company has reduced capital expenditure of the company
7 | P a g e

and lowered their operational costs. It increases customer satisfaction and number of customers
of Panaseer.
Q4. What type of challenges have you faced to run the business?
Rising capital and maintaining steady cash flow become issues for the business to maintain
flawless services for the customers (Mason and Harrison, 2015). The entrepreneur, Nik Whitfield
has faced challenges in raising capital as self-funding has been stressful for him to create
enterprise-grade software start-up. It has been identified that the IT team of the company has not
been effective to provide cost-effective and simple solutions. They also face issue to keep the
system up-to-date that increases network downtime that reduces the accuracy of technical
solutions. Market share of the company is low as there are multiple big companies which have
high revenue in the market. It is difficult to get high skilled employees that reduce effectiveness
of recruitment, as stated by Nik Whitfield. Corporate culture and organisation is not structured
yet, that increases employee workload.
Data breach becomes a challenge for the company as it enhances operational costs of the
company. Alongside, accessing time and skill is limited of the company to provide effective
solutions for the customers. Skills shortage in technology is most critical issue for Panaseer.
Such skill gap reduces supply and demand. It also reduces return of investment and as the
common has lack of financial support, it is not possible for them to hire more skilled employees.
Q5. Has your company faced any growth in the market?
Revenue of the Panaseer is $1 million in 2018 and the company has faced huge growth after its
establishment. The company has also won the 2018 SC awards that help them to grow the
business. According to Nick Whitfield, it has been a group achievement and result of hard work
of team members to gain success of Panaseer. It directs the company to the right track and
increase brand image of the company. Creative programming, promotional and sales strategies of
the company has helped them to conduct offshore marketing to the countries like Greece and
Malaysia. As VPN solutions of Panaseer increases network bandwidth, more number of the
businesses is interested to buy solutions from them. Customised telecommunication services of
the company increases the number of customers.
Panaseer has achieved advanced technology partner status in the AWS Partner network (APN).
Therefore, the company has opportunity to help the client in designing, securing and mitigating
threats in cloud solutions more effectively. Continuous monitoring of security control is possible
8 | P a g e

that increases trusted visibility of security posture. As mentioned by Nick Whitfield that the
company has selected for SwiftScale Spring 2018 cohort for being forward thinking and fast-
growth enterprise.
Q6. What are the current growth and development strategies of your company?
As per the viewpoint of the entrepreneur of Panaseer, there is a growth opportunity for the
company to expand their target market. The product portfolio of the company is strong and
rapidly growing as they serve a broad range of tactical and strategic cyber-security use cases. In
present time, portfolio consists of core platform deployed on cloud along with more than 40 third
party workflow and product integrations. B2B business model is followed by the company to
improve service offering forms and the value delivered for Enterprise customers. The company
has also joined Tech City UK Upscale programme for 2018 to improve the services.
APN partnership brings new opportunities in the market and entrepreneur seeks to increase their
customer base. Fast innovation and growth strategy is used by the CEO to improve their services
and increase number of customers. The company has also announced US expansion to increase
growth opportunities and demand in the market.
Q7. Do your company get government support to successfully run the business?
Start-up of the business has endorsed by the government and has been selected to accompany the
Prime Minister of the UK. This cyber start-up has gained government financial support and
support for offshore marketing. External investment is also supported by the government as
advanced data science technique that is used by the company can improve British economy and
bring innovation in the global market potential.
2.1 Analysis
Development route and evaluation of sources of finance
Experiences in the related field and identification of investor are required for the SMEs to initiate
their business and evaluate development routes. Panaseer has also founded by experience
technical entrepreneurs to provide cyber security solutions to the customers. The company has
raised fund from some investors and has secured $10 million in Series-A funding
(www.uktech.news, 2019). The cyber defence company has gained a huge number of investors
in the market along with government support. Panaseer has developed initial sources from the
9 | P a g e

series a funding and banks. The company has employed 33 people in London and New York. It
has raised $25.6 million including $5.6 million Seed round (panaseer.com, 2019). It has created a
development route for the company and enhanced financial strengths.
Services of the company to improve customer satisfaction and competitive advantage
As cybercrime and data breaches increase data hacking possibilities, it increases the operational
costs of the companies. Therefore, the security services of Panaseer are effective for reducing
cyber threats of the client companies which is effective for the company to gain high customer
base. Furthermore, it is identified that the solution that are provided by the company suits
customer applications, budget and location that increases their number of customers. Henceforth,
it is observed that SMEs can gain high customer satisfaction if there is innovation in services
(Bridge et al., 2012). As they can identify the actual needs of the customer better by conducting
survey and the price is low, customer loyalty is high for the SMEs to gain competitive advantage
(Burgess et al. 2015).
Top competitors of the companies are Securonix, Cylance and Bay Dynamics that have more
revenue than Panaseer. It has been observed that Securonix has gained $29 million revenue in
2018 (Graafland, 2018). However, the company use proprietary algorithms and personalised
solutions to improve the services and gain competitive advantage in the market.
Figure 2: Market position of Panaseer
(Source: panaseer.com, 2019)
In contrary, it is identified that management and leadership of the company is not good. As Nik
Whitfield is technical entrepreneur, he has lack of knowledge in management and HR services. It
10 | P a g e

lowers the workplace culture and increased workload for the employees. Data breaches also
become an issue for them which reduce company’s profit (Loader, 2015). Marketing strategies of
the company is not good as most of the SMEs face investment issue in creating advertising
strategies and promote their services in effective way.
Growth strategy and opportunities
Cyber Security market of has faced high growth in the UK. It is expected that it can face a
growth from $20.66 billion in 2018 to $41.77 billion in 2023 with Compound Annual Growth
Rate (CAGR) of 15.1% (Researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk, 2019). It has helped the
company to gain more investment for their innovation. Panaseer has taken growth strategy to
improve their software services and gain profit in the market. A new proactive approach has been
implemented by the company in their services; it has created growth opportunities for the
company. Therefore, SMEs need to bring innovation in the services that can enhance customer
satisfaction and customer base in the UK (Loader, 2018). It can reduce of regulatory compliance
and market expansion is also possible.
Figure 3: Website traffic of Panaseer
(Source: panaseer.com, 2019)
The entrepreneur has raised $2.5 million through the syndicated seed round on cyber security
tools to reduce the threats of global WannaCry ransomware attack (www.telegraph.co.uk, 2019).
The company needs to improve their organizational structure and segment roles and
11 | P a g e

responsibilities properly among the employees based on their skills and knowledge. Therefore,
the leaders can identify the issues that are faced by the employees and the company can gain an
opportunity to improve the working culture as per the employee feedback.
12 | P a g e