Lomond Capital

Lomond Capital operates in the rapidly growing UK Private Rental Sector.

Lomond’s business model is based on acquiring good quality regional firms, scaling those firms through acquisitions and broadening the business model. Regional partnership businesses retain and equity stake in the business with Lomond providing funding and support to build the regional business to be the dominant business in the region.

Significant benefits have been realised by business owners either wanting to become a Lomond Partnership Business or by selling their business to Lomond. Partnership businesses benefit from the opportunity to realise value from the existing business, subsequently building the business via the on-going support for acquisitions, support on generating significant organic growth and the ability to rely on central resources in such areas as regulation, compliance, IT and HR, together with opportunity to benefit from a significant uplift on the exit multiples enjoyed by all

Lomond has acquired 34 businesses since November 2010 and now manages in excess of £2.7bn of assets shareholders including vendors from the enlarged business in the longer term.

How we helped Lomond Capital

What was the Problem? The Solution The Results

The problem SDL faced

Bruce Evans, Chief Executive of Lomond had worked with us previously when he was part of Country Wide. Armed with the knowledge of what we managed to achieve for Country Wide he got in touch and asked us to how we could help Lomond Capital.

Bruce explained that through acquisitions and organic growth, Lomond currently have 29 branches with 5 different brands across the UK. As they have grown through acquisitions, they had over 17 different telecoms providers across the group. This was completely unmanageable.

Each site had a different telephone system, that worked differently, some without basic features like called ID. Service levels varied dramatically across the group. There was absolutely zero central management, If support was needed at a site and the person that normally dealt with this was away from the office it was a real challenge to identify who to contact and what service levels were in place. This was not only inefficient but posed huge security risks to the group. The other major challenge was with the billing It was a huge task for them to manage 17 bills each month, all coming in on different days. Trying to understand if they were being billed the correct amount was impossible

Once Bruce made contact and explained his situation, we set to work collecting all the data available. We looked at what was being billed and more importantly what was needed. We then presented Bruce with a single document to explain his estate fully along side our proposed solution. This was, and still is, an invaluable document.

The Solution Provided

Through consultation, we quickly identified that by centralising all services there would not only be a significant saving to the business, running each site would be significantly easier if each branch had the same infrastructure. It was agreed that for efficiency, management, continuity, budget, and security a hosted telephone system would be rolled out to each site with a leased line at each site connected through an MPLS network.

Global 4 took the lead on this. A rollout plan was agreed on a site by site basis, based on need and agreed through consultation with Lomond Capital. Each site was surveyed to ensure the right infrastructure was in place to support the new service, once the survey was complete, the leased lines installed, and the programming requirements were identified, we got to work on programming. All programming was completed remotely to ensure minimal disruption. Each site did receive an engineering visit to connect their handsets and associated hardware and to ensure everything was as set up and working as they wanted it. As the same engineer was responsible from start to finish at each site, deployment was seamless.

The Results

Their running costs have reduced dramatically. They now have excellent internet speeds at all sites and an easy to use, identical telephone service at each site, directors and managers can work seamlessly at any location. Security and programming is managed centrally and Lomond like that Global 4 support both minor and major programming changes as and when required. Their billing is also centralised and is delivered through a single itemised bill which has made a huge difference to them. Through their dedicated account manager and Global 4 support infrastructure they now have a service that helps them to work efficiently and deliver excellent service.

Global 4 have been fantastic and I certainly would recommend them to other estate & lettings agents.

Bruce Evans | Chief Executive