Situation

An engineering software company with 85 employees and offices in 6 countries where the objective was to make the necessary changes in order to sell the company for £12m within 8 – 12 months. The firm was loss making and had not grown revenue in the previous 2 years. In addition the firm had 4 problematic implementations where legal proceedings were underway.

Objectives

• Given the time available the plan was to create a 3^rd party distribution plan and execute this
• Make the firm profitable and ensure all operational processes were well organized as to give confidence to new potential investors that the growth plan was achievable
• Grow revenue from the previous year
• Fine tune a series of operational processes which would have had a negative effect on the sale price.
• Sell the company within 8 months for £12m

Outcome

• The company was sold for £18m
• Increased profit from a breakeven forecast to £2.5m in 8 months. This was a result of year end successful deals due to the newly signed relationship with IBM.
• Signed a distribution agreement in China with IBM which increased reoccurring revenue for the next three years. This had a major impact of the Enterprise Value of the company.
• Reorganized the sales teams and made significant changes in staff.
• Implemented a global support process/system to monitor all client support issues.
• Implemented the PRINCE 2 delivery methodology in order to control difficult and loss making service engagements.
• Signed global reseller agreements with Oracle. EMC and IBM.