Our Vision & Strategic Ambition

Our goal recognises that business intelligence lies at the heart of the services we provide.

We aim to be the recognised knowledge leader and pre-eminent advisor in our sectors.

We partner with our clients throughout their business life cycle to optimise and enhance value.

We exist to help our clients buy, operate, develop and sell their businesses. We do this through supplying a range of demand services that they require, with a focus on quality of service. We enjoy the synergistic benefits of common markets and common client bases.

We have committed management teams running our businesses. As a professional services conglomerate, we benefit from a diversity of sectors and services. Our shareholders support our profitable activities and those that can become so in a realistic timeframe.

Our strategic values

Five key areas of strategy underpin how we believe that vision can be achieved.

We aim to grow revenues and profits consistently and sustainably. That means identifying new service line opportunities, expanding internationally where we can replicate our UK business models and services, ensuring that any growth plans are based on delivering profitable returns within an achievable timeframe and actively encouraging and enabling cross-group selling.

Key for any investment we make is the expectation that it can deliver profitable returns over a foreseeable timeframe to enhance the value of the Group. All service lines should have, or be capable of (in a foreseeable time frame of 3 to 5 years) achieving, a critical mass of revenue and thereby contributing an operating profit. We believe that the objective for operating profit returns on revenue should be no less than 20% for cyclical businesses, and no less than 10% for non-cyclical businesses. All investment principles will be considered in the context of profits achievable over a 5 year timeframe and the payback period on investment.

We aim to secure and retain knowledge-rich client-oriented colleagues and to identify and develop future leaders. To achieve that, we know that our group must be an attractive place to work which enables people to fulfil their potential. Key elements required to achieve that include knowledge capture from individuals, diversity, training and professional development, the creation of an environment for ‘generation now’, flexible working, attractive incentivisation plans, visible career paths, defined succession planning, fostering a culture of teamwork and collaboration, cross group events and empowerment & engagement.

We believe that it is vital to retain a core central resilience to support sustainability across the group. For us, that means ensuring the following:

  • Holding a sufficient level of cash or liquid assets via a central treasury function
  • Owning our own assets
  • Building non-cyclical services to 50% of revenue
  • Increasing contracted & recurring income
  • Employing a flexible business model
  • Retaining key management and continually attracting new talent
  • Maintaining subsidiaries as legally distinct entities
  • Cyber, legal and fiduciary compliance
  • Insuring risks
  • Maintaining quoted status and thereby the ability to issue shares & bonds

Never has it been more important to optimise the use of technology to deliver efficiencies and generate value. In this context, we seek to identify strategic areas where centralisation may create benefits. We believe it important to create a data & information strategy to identify data products that can be monetised. We seek to introduce a customer-first approach to customer facing products including employee interfaces. We know it is vital to continually explore new tech platforms available across all of our businesses that may help us service the life cycle of our clients’ businesses, and to apply centralised commercial rules on all development & contracts to realise value.

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