roundtable


The Business Magazine combined with leading law firm Irwin Mitchell to host this roundtable of experienced business leaders at The Vineyard Hotel & Spa at Stockcross near Newbury


The challenges of scaling-up Participants Bob Atkinson: MD, In Cloud Solutions


Sarah Cardew: Partner, head of tax, Irwin Mitchell


Peter Francis: CFO, G3 Holdings Group


Sukhi Gidar: Founder, Gold Care Homes


David Griffiths: CEO, FISCAL Technologies


Jeremy Hill: Senior private banker, Kleinwort Hambros


The Roundtable team Journalist John Burbedge reports the highlights


Time to take a serious look at your business abilities


Good scale-up timing was crucial agreed Simon Telling and John Scholes. “We’ve all seen businesses that scaled earlier than they should – they hadn’t got their proposition right, didn’t have enough customers lining up to sell to, couldn’t say ‘No’ to the wrong sort of clients, and could only keep going by generating revenue.”


Telling: “It’s all about timing: having the confidence of knowing you are completely in control of your current business activities, have the management capacity to deal with the concerns scaling-up may bring, notably people issues, and won’t get easily distracted from your core business work by such problems.”


Successful scale-ups generally required a bigger management team with broader abilities.


“Without the right procedures, the people to execute them or the ability to acquire companies and absorb different cultures, then things can quickly go wrong,” Scholes highlighted.


Scaling-up had to be for understood business reasons, a strategic objective, and companies needed to be ready to achieve their goals – talented people and management processes were key, noted Sukhi Gidar. Potential risks, internal and external also needed to be recognised and evaluated.


Establishing the right management team to undertake a scale-up could be a major challenge for entrepreneurial founders having selected friends or technical experts to help found the business, said John Riddick. “These are not always the people to move the business on alone because they won’t view it dispassionately.” Bringing in professional expertise to assist with management disciplines such as accountancy, marketing or finance, can support the founders as they are also passionate but perhaps more impartial.


Scholes: “Often the biggest problem is the founder who just hangs on, not realising that they are at the limit of their abilities. Getting founder change can be really tricky.”


Sarah Cardew 38 businessmag.co.uk


Buying out shareholders can be a problem too, noted David McLeman,


David McLeman: CEO, Ancoris


Sarah Phillips: Partner, tax, trusts and estates, Irwin Mitchell


John Riddick: Senior corporate partner, Irwin Mitchell John Scholes: MD, The Catalyst Group


John Taylor: Office managing partner, RSM


Simon Telling: Director, Vestd


David Murray: Founder and publisher of The Business Magazine, chaired the discussion


as David Griffiths and Peter Francis highlighted the delays and difficulties of redeploying or letting go loyal employees who may have been school chums or friends, but won’t be going to the next business phase.


“You have to get the right people driving the scaling – an experienced sales or ops director for instance. That first release, letting go of the reins of revenue is probably the toughest challenge,” said Francis. “You have to associate value with people. If they’re taking a seat at the table they should have a valuable reason for being there.”


Is scale-up the right answer? Are you ready?


Although not recommended, an ego- tripping founder looking to exit the business on a high might be one driver of scaling, suggested Scholes.


John Taylor highlighted the talent battle as a scale-up driver: “In our sector we (RSM) have to keep growing to attract and


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – MARCH/APRIL 2018


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