Brighter tomorrow as D&B Accelerate50 is set to be unveiled

As the UK slow­ly emerges from what it hopes will be its final lock­down, buoyed by a vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme admired around the world, there is a bur­geon­ing sense of opti­mism in the air. And March 23rd brings some more wel­come pos­i­tiv­i­ty, with a dose of cel­e­bra­tion, as Dun & Brad­street reveals the Accelerate50: the UK’s top 50 high-growth tech com­pa­nies.

The inau­gur­al Dun & Brad­street Accelerate50 awards event fol­lows the launch of the glob­al Dun & Brad­street Part­ner Pro­gramme D&B Accel­er­ate. The part­ner pro­gramme strives to build pow­er­ful rela­tion­ships, com­bin­ing Dun & Bradstreet’s best-in-class data with its part­ners’ inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms to present com­plete solu­tions for organ­i­sa­tions. 

Tech­nol­o­gy, of course, has been piv­otal to min­imis­ing the impact of suc­ces­sive lock­downs on busi­ness­es’ pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and keep­ing peo­ple con­nect­ed to vital ser­vices, and each oth­er, online. Equal­ly, inno­va­tion has a cru­cial role to play as we enter a post-pan­dem­ic world, with organ­i­sa­tions util­is­ing its trans­for­ma­tive pow­ers to reimag­ine how we work and live.

As gov­ern­ments ordered cit­i­zens to stay at home, tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies took on a greater impor­tance. Out of sheer neces­si­ty, in a few short months organ­i­sa­tions speed­ed up their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions by sev­er­al years, accord­ing to research by McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny. A study by Twilio, mean­while, not­ed that dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions strate­gies advanced glob­al­ly by an aver­age of six years. Coro­n­avirus has been a dig­i­tal accel­er­ant like no oth­er. 

Through the ampli­fied need for dig­i­tal ser­vices, solu­tions and plat­forms, the savvi­est tech star­tups have seized the moment to accel­er­ate their growth ambi­tions. As peo­ple have worked, learnt, banked, exer­cised and socialised from home, they have learnt more about what can be achieved dig­i­tal­ly than all the tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in the world put togeth­er. 

Cru­cial­ly, it has also widened the oppor­tu­ni­ty for tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es to dis­rupt tra­di­tion­al indus­tries. The Accelerate50 presents the lead­ing dig­i­tal dis­rup­tors across the finan­cial, man­u­fac­tur­ing, com­put­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tors.

The Accelerate50 pro­gramme is pow­ered by Dun & Bradstreet’s recog­nised and trust­ed data intel­li­gence and insights. The tech­nol­o­gy sta­tus of each com­pa­ny, defined by hav­ing tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts, plat­forms, hard­ware and ser­vices form­ing a pri­ma­ry rev­enue resource, was ver­i­fied and val­i­dat­ed using Dun & Bradstreet’s in-house pro­pri­etary ana­lyt­ics tools. 

The process for select­ing com­pa­nies start­ed with the use of D&B Hoovers to gen­er­ate a list of UK-based com­pa­nies with rev­enues greater than £40,000 in 2016 and £3 mil­lion in 2019. Hav­ing estab­lished the top 50, sort­ed by their three-year rev­enue CAGR, the list was then scanned using Dun & Brad­street third-par­ty risk and com­pli­ance checks to iden­ti­fy and remove any com­pa­nies in which sig­nif­i­cant eth­i­cal or com­pli­ance issues were flagged.

Dun & Brad­street cap­tures finan­cial data from a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing Com­pa­nies House, Com­pa­nies Reg­is­tra­tion Office, Char­i­ty Com­mis­sion and some oth­er GOV.UK offi­cial sites. For list­ed enti­ties, it is able to source data direct­ly from com­pa­nies’ web­sites.

Fintechs on top

It is per­haps no coin­ci­dence that, as you will dis­cov­er tomor­row, the top three com­pa­nies in the Accelerate50 are fin­techs. Over the last decade, a raft of tech­nol­o­gy star­tups have set their sights on the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try, spot­ting an oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve cus­tomers in a bet­ter way than incum­bent play­ers weighed down by lega­cy. 

The fin­tech mar­ket has con­tin­ued to help expand access to finan­cial ser­vices dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, with strong growth in all types of dig­i­tal finan­cial ser­vices except lend­ing, accord­ing to a joint study by the World Bank, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge and World Eco­nom­ic Forum. While oth­er indus­tries faced near-col­lapse, most types of fin­tech firms report­ed strong growth for the first half of 2020, com­pared to the same peri­od in 2019.

Con­sumers and busi­ness­es have been striv­ing to inter­act dif­fer­ent­ly with finan­cial ser­vices for some time, but the pan­dem­ic added an extra impe­tus for more seam­less alter­na­tives across dig­i­tal chan­nels. Online bank­ing usage grew by a fifth dur­ing the first lock­down last year, accord­ing to research by PwC, which also record­ed a sig­nif­i­cant accel­er­a­tion in the shift to dig­i­tal pay­ments and pre­dict­ed a 25 per cent uplift in mobile pay­ments by 2022. 

Of course, just by virtue of being a tech­nol­o­gy firm dur­ing a time of such heavy reliance on tech­nol­o­gy does not guar­an­tee suc­cess. The impact of the pan­dem­ic, and fur­ther dis­rup­tion from the Brex­it tran­si­tion, has been felt just as severe­ly by many tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies as it has in all oth­er indus­tries, which led to Dun & Brad­street down­grad­ing its real GDP growth fore­cast for 2020 to ‑10.5 per cent, com­pared with 2019’s 1.3 per cent growth.

Indeed, a record num­ber of tech star­tups fold­ed in Sep­tem­ber, after months of ear­ly-stage busi­ness­es strug­gling to attract invest­ment to stay afloat. This makes the achieve­ments of the Accelerate50 com­pa­nies all the more impres­sive. In a deeply chal­leng­ing year for most organ­i­sa­tions, they have dis­played enor­mous resilience and agili­ty to out­pace expec­ta­tions.

“The Accelerate50 cel­e­brates these organ­i­sa­tions and how they grew in such a tumul­tuous peri­od, whether through dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, agili­ty in the time of COVID-19 or invest­ing in data to improve busi­ness per­for­mance,” says Neer­aj Sahai, Pres­i­dent, Inter­na­tion­al at Dun & Brad­street. “Fast-growth com­pa­nies, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the Accelerate50, can play a part in the UK’s eco­nom­ic revival through high­er invest­ment, com­pet­i­tive exports and employ­ment cre­ation, paving the way for rapid eco­nom­ic growth in 2021 and beyond.”This unveil­ing of the Dun & Brad­street Accelerate50 will not only present the win­ning com­pa­nies, and com­pare finan­cial results with­in their respec­tive sec­tors, but it will also delve into the sto­ries of those at the top of the list. Through inter­views with their founders and lead­ers, we dis­cov­er the key ingre­di­ents of a fast-growth tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny dur­ing such an unprece­dent­ed time. Don’t miss out as these tech trail­blaz­ers reveal their views on upcom­ing chal­lenges, oppor­tu­ni­ties and the pow­er of data to inform their deci­sion-mak­ing.

To learn more about the D&B Aceelarate50 award win­ners, click here