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The Interview
Adam Brown CFO of
“It’s a good technological fit for us, adding quality planning and scheduling functionality to our manufacturing solutions.” Access Group’s CFO, Adam Brown discusses the company’s recent acquisition of Production Modelling Limited, a specialist in production scheduling and simulation solutions.
finance function. With more than 15 years’ experience in the technology sector, Adam not only has considerable expertise as a finance professional but also in how technology drives efficiency and helps improve the bottom line for businesses.
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His passion for working closely with customers and building best practice is backed up by his firm belief that ‘our customers’ success will lead to our success’. His results to date have consistently proved this to be correct.
A qualified chartered accountant with the ICAEW, Adam has a strong track record of increasing revenues, margins, and profits. At Access, he has managed the successful integration of ten acquisitions, organic growth of 12% and overall growth of 30% with increasing profit margins.
What more can you tell us about Access Group?
In 2011 Access underwent an MBO backed by Lyceum Capital. Since then, we’ve undergone a growth strategy based on ongoing double digit organic growth and making acquisitions that complement our existing product portfolio.
The board includes members of one of Access’ former resellers Armstrong Consultants who were acquired in 2008, but went on to lead the company. Access has been trading since 1991.
Access’ mission is to provide integrated solutions to mid-market businesses and NFP’s that help them achieve their goals, increasing efficiency, saving time and money and making their lives easier.
dam Brown joined Access Group as CFO in September 2011 to help fast track the company’s business strategy, including the extension of its product portfolio and M&A activity, in addition to running the
What are the cornerstones of Access’ offering to the business management sphere?
Access’ integrated business management portfolio spans solutions for ERP, finance, manufacturing, warehousing, HR, payroll, business intelligence, professional service automation and includes our cloud platform Access aCloud.
More than 5,000 UK businesses and not-for-profit organisations use Access to improve their performance, profitability and drive growth. Vertical focus and industry-specific solutions differentiate Access in the market and templated solutions make for rapid and easy deployments.
Access is one of the top five fastest growing UK software developers in The Sunday Times Buyout Track 100 2012 and featured in Profit Track 100 in 2011. We’ve also been placed among the UK’s top employers in The Sunday Times’ 100 ‘Best Companies to Work For’ 2014.
You recently acquired Production Modelling; what more can you tell us about this company?
Production Modelling develops and sells Orchestrate planning and scheduling software. Orchestrate is proven to deliver cost reduction through lower stock holdings, reduced WIP values and better utilisation of labour. They’re based in Warwickshire, and have many customers in the manufacturing sector including Siemens Medical, Dupont and Steelite International all using Orchestrate to manage business critical processes within their organisations.
What motivated Access to acquire Production Modelling?
Access already had a number of customers successfully integrate Production Modelling’s Orchestrate software with our manufacturing solution Access SupplyChain. It’s a good technological fit for us, adding quality planning and scheduling functionality to our manufacturing solutions.
The solution, which offers a graphical, visual plan of the entire supply chain process, is proven to provide better on time delivery, reduced WIP values and better utilisation of labour. We’ve been very impressed with the team and the Orchestrate software. It gives us more opportunity to provide our customers with an integrated solution that delivers all of their manufacturing requirements.
What lies ahead for Access in the coming years?
Access plans to continue to invest in product development and acquisitions to provide customers with solutions that best meet their needs. This includes an increasing portfolio of products that can be delivered from the cloud to supplement on premise solutions. This will further meet the transactional processing, work flow and information requirements of our customers - as well as enabling them to achieve best practice scalable systems and processes. Access expects to continue with double digit organic growth plus growth from acquisitions.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Access has a unique employee culture focused on doing more of what we are good at, and built around open communication and numerous employee and social events to bring teams together. This includes the annual employee day where all 500+ employees meet to reflect on recent achievements and the plans for the year ahead. In addition, we also set up the annual Big Thanks programme where all employees are rewarded if we achieve our targets, offering them either a weekend in Spain (150 attended in 2013), an additional contribution to their pension, or a cash bonus. The choice is totally theirs.
Contact:
Web: www.theaccessgroup.com Tel: 0845 345 3300