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22 entrepreneurs


The businessman determined to grow a successful legacy for future generations


Growing up on a farm in the middle of the Berkshire Downs, Matt Franklin might have been expected to follow in his father’s footsteps in the agriculture industry. Instead however, he has (metaphorically) gone from rags to riches and back to rags with a rollercoaster career in technology. A former winner of the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, today the 44-year-old is managing director of award-winning Roc Technologies, a Newbury- based technology business which is expected to turn over £14 million this year. Here, he talks to Alison Dewar about ploughing his own road to success


Born and brought up in Compton, Franklin’s early claim to fame was winning Young Farmers Tractor Driver of the Year, and his entrepreneurial spirit was already in evidence as he earned up to £30 a week selling eggs at the roadside. With aspirations to become a professional footballer, as a teenager he realised his talent didn’t quite match up to his ambitions, and instead pursued a business studies degree at Portsmouth University. Armed with a degree and a new plan to become a corporate lawyer, his intention was to go to Bar School after a season’s skiing. Fate took a hand however, when the team at Cabletron in Newbury, where he worked part-time, offered him an extra £500 to stay on. From there, Franklin went on to found Prime Business Solutions, which was acquired for £28m in 2004, after which he sailed round the world and invested in restaurants and the property market. A return to the industry with 2e2, the business that acquired Prime, was less successful however as, through no fault of his own, the business crashed and he was left to try and pick up the pieces. Along with three colleagues Mike Hockey, Steve Shirley and Sam Simpson he acquired Roc Technologies and began the building process once again.


How did you found Prime?


When Cabletron went down the partner route, together with some colleagues, I set up Prime in 1996 to demonstrate how the channel model would work. It was quite difficult as we had zero funding apart from a £10k loan from my parents, but we made it work. By 2003 our turnover was £35m and we sold the business the following year to a large integrator.


What happened next? What was your first job?


Growing up, IT was never my forté. I was encouraged to be involved in the Young Farmers and beef farming instead. When I was studying for my A Levels, I had a part-time job co-ordinating data in an IT call centre. As students, if we were well-behaved, we would be allowed to go to the executive carvery in a big mansion house and I remember thinking what a fantastic place it would be to work. Ironically, in 1999, when I had Prime Business Solutions, I signed a 15-year lease and we moved into that very mansion. During university, I had a placement at Xerox in Woking, working in operations and customer service, which was very good experience, and then went to Cabletron, which was my first full-time job in technology. Within three years I was running a sales team, spending time in the US and handling some impressive deals with large enterprise customers


www.businessmag.co.uk


I was asked to return and run some other businesses within the group, which I did very successfully, helping them grow from £30m to £400m. The business was about to be sold but, unknown to the management team, things weren’t quite as they seemed and it crashed overnight. I tried to look after as many people as possible and continued to provide services to customers so they weren’t impacted by the collapse. After nearly a month, I had a wage bill for £300,000 but we didn’t even have a bank account and I turned to my customers for support. Because we had only been going for three weeks, they couldn’t help so that’s when we acquired Roc Technologies, to give us the trading record we needed.


Additional former colleagues came on board as the management team and our plan for the first year was to solidify our position and build relationships with our customers. Within a couple of months we had grown Roc from £100,000 to £400,000 turnover and within the first year we were at £4m, which doubled in year two. This year, we expect to turn over £14m in line with our plan to do £20m by 2018.


How difficult was it to start again? We had to demonstrate we weren’t culpable and


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – OCTOBER 2015


we literally started with nothing, I had to mortgage my house and used personal money to buy things like stationery and petrol and to fund the new website. It was a gamble but I believe you have to be prepared to take calculated risks.


The key thing was that people knew me and they knew my team would deliver on our promises. They trusted us with those critical projects because they knew we had done it for them before. They knew we could do difficult jobs and deliver them on time, to cost and achieve the benefits they were looking for.


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