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Current Filter: Document>>>>>Interview> Covering all the bases Editorial Type: Interview Date: 05-2015 Views: 2911 Key Topics: Document BPO Scanning Records Management Archiving Public sector Key Companies: Restore plc Restore Document Management Key Products: Key Industries: | |||
| Restore plc has acquired upwards of 20 companies in the last 5 years, including scanning, shredding and relocation businesses. DM Magazine editor David Tyler caught up with the company's CEO, Charles Skinner. David Tyler: Restore might be best known to our readers as the company that acquired records management and scanning company Cintas last year, but there is a lot more to the business than that. Can you give us a brief overview of the company's recent history? Charles Skinner: Restore has been active in Records Management for about 10 years, and I was brought in 6 years ago to bring an additional focus on the Document Management side of the business. At that time we had two RM divisions and a very small scanning business. We already had a very strong presence in London, especially in the legal sector. It seemed to me even then that Document Management was a market that was going to see increased consolidation, and we were in a good position to be the ones doing the consolidating! Our first moves involved 'folding in' a number of smaller Records Management firms. Typically in that industry customers tend to be very 'sticky': they tend not to leave a supplier once they have a relationship ongoing. So the easiest way for us to grow that side of the business was clearly through acquisitions. We were finding that many of their customers were looking for both a higher level of service than they might previously have been getting, and also a wider level of national coverage across mainland Britain. So that first drive for us was all about getting more sites across the country. This in turn led to cost benefits for us and our clients in terms of IT and infrastructure rationalisation. From that start we've bought upwards of 20 companies over the last five years or so, predominantly in the RM space. Along the way, we found there were a number of ancillary services which fitted in very well with our overall direction.
DT: How have you been able to decide what sort of services would best complement the existing RM focus? We also bought a RM business which had its own relocation business, and it became clear that in fact the customer for both of those businesses was essentially the same. That firm and another office removals company we bought had both slightly 'fallen into' the Records Management business - as you might imagine, their customers were increasingly saying "Can you clear our offices for us - oh, and could you also store our documents somewhere?"
DT: What is your route to market? Is it a conventional IT sale or is it more of an office service channel?
DT: With so much M&A activity in the last five years, you must have become a significant player in the market? In addition to that we're number one in office relocation, and we're a reasonable player in both IT relocation and IT recycling. Being able to offer such a wide range of services right across the country obviously makes us attractive to lots of clients who want to be able to use one supplier for more than one thing. All our customers are on one single CRM database - so if I'm a shredding salesman looking at selling into a particular corporation or NHS Trust, for example, I can look on our systems and see that perhaps we moved their office last year, or we stored their patient records - I have immediate access to the key people within that prospective client organisation.
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