62 tvbma roundtable ... continued from previous page
had grown from a £600m turnover in 2008 to £1.6b today, with just three acquisitions and largely through organic growth.
“Growth is absolutely the key mission of our business, and we certainly take up innovative ideas from all around the business. Being privately owned definitely allows you to be more flexible.” Westcoast also works closely with customers to develop mutually beneficial creative improvements.
Rob Pickering
having created a core team of “very driven, like-minded individuals”.
Witchalls: “We have grown organically by investing every year in our teams, bringing in graduates, apprentices and new staff.” More recently, PBA has used acquisition to enhance its planning, economic, engineering and environmental capabilities, and provide geographic market growth. “Key to our purchases is to fully understand that business, its abilities, work and partnership ethos, to ensure we can work with them.”
Sim: “Growth used to be about doing things quicker and cheaper, but innovative ideas and company changes can be scary for the big institutional investors behind the bigger companies.” They prefer a steady growth mindset.
Poole queried: “But, don’t a lot of the really big tech companies have a key focus on encouraging their people to do new exciting things?”
Sim: “Yes, but The Apples and Googles of this world can do that because they are bigger than their investors. While we are a tech company, and we do have exciting things happening, our theme park customers still operate very much within a people industry, and within a space they understand.”
Tatham pointed out that Westcoast
Dhillon agreed that private owner- management enabled organic growth through flexible, creative and long-term customer-focused thinking. “Customers need to feel they are getting the right attention.
“We shy away from acquisitions and listing because it creates different pressures for our company.” A focus on profit, short-term achievement and successful exit usually accompanied external investment.
FISco had successfully grown organically. “For us it’s about sustainable internal investment and long-term relationships with our clients.”
Transparency in a competitive and comparative world
Dhillon: “We actually declare our margins, because we don’t want our clients to think ‘How much they saved, and what are they making?’
“We don’t have a business development team, because if you deliver what you promise, then inevitably you get renewals and referrals. Today we have work worth £20m in the pipeline and our growth pattern is set for the next two years.”
Tatham: “Life is a constant negotiation, and for us a single digit profit margin is OK, but absolutely we are open with our customers and tell them what we make and what our costs are.”
Murray highlighted that professional services tended not to be as transparent on price as other sectors.
Hutchinson: “Culturally you are right, and clients today do want to know exactly what benefits they are getting for a tendered price. I think it (more transparency) is something that will probably come.”
Allan Poole
www.businessmag.co.uk
Poole suggested professional service providers offered a different sort of transparency – clearly showing the scope and nature of their work, often with a fixed price or financial cap on specific areas.
Hutchinson pointed out that ongoing service costs for a long-term client were easier to assess and might become more transparent, but transactional work costs were very difficult to estimate.
Dhillon: “In mature industries benchmarking is available, procurement teams are very thorough.” If people want to set different profit margins than competitors, they have to be operating in dynamic sectors and offering innovative, in-demand products or services, he added.
Poole: “As long as you are offering a better deal than anyone else, you have a commercial right to your margin.” While professional services had become commoditised to a certain degree, all the providers had something different to offer, he noted.
And the quality of client-provider relationship, the expertise of people supplying the service, was often that difference, added Stevenson.
Tatham: “We don’t sell many of the IT products; we sell our service around them.”
John Wilcox
‘The gorilla’ ... and other challenges to our region
Barnes, also a director of Thames Valley Berkshire Local Enterprise Partnership, highlighted “continuing to drive the growth of this very successful region.”
Maintaining momentum, improving infrastructure, honing the Thames Valley competitive edge, was crucial with “an 800-lb gorilla called London on our doorstep”. While an extended Heathrow would benefit everyone, he felt direct competition with ‘the gorilla’ was not the answer. Learning to work alongside the opportunities and strengths offered by London’s close relationship, while ensuring the Thames Valley remained a great place to work and live, was the goal.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2016
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