Summary
1 SMART SOLUTIONS RECRUITMENT (Newport) www.smartsolutionsrecruitment.com Recruitment agency Established: 2007 Growth (2007-2009): 3426.7% Description Smart Solutions is a recruitment agency that provides temporary and permanent staff for positions across a range of sectors. As well as placing employees with companies, Smart completely manages the workforce for companies from handling payroll and legal compliance to providing benefits and training products. Smart's customers range from large multinational companies to SMEs. It specialises in several sectors including waste and recycling, food manufacture and call centres, but is also a generalist recruitment agency with shops in towns across Wales and the UK. Origins CEO Nathan Bowles set up Smart Solutions Recruitment to address what he saw as a significant flaw with traditional recruitment agencies. Working in the waste and recycling industry, he felt that recruitment agencies did not understand what was required of employees in the sector and made little effort to tailor their services. Workers would turn up completely unprepared for the work they had to do which led to significant worker turnover and dissatisfaction. The turning point for Nathan was when a recruitment agent sent him a worker who was entirely unsuitable for a role which required specific skills. When Nathan asked the agent whether he thought he'd provided the best person for the job, the agent said: "You try and do better." Nathan decided he would. Having identified this gap in the market, Nathan decided to start a recruitment agency with an emphasis on matching workers to the jobs they were doing, and avoid the all-too-familiar scenario where flexible workers were just placed on a site and left to get on with it. Nathan opened the first Smart shop in Pontypool in 2007, employing four people in the first six months. Following a rapid expansion plan, the first on- site office outside Wales opened in Walsall in March 2008, followed by four more high-street offices in the next 12 months and five more at client premises. The firm now employs 60 people and handles over 1,000 temporary staff a week. Main challenges when starting the business The main start-up issues were cashflow and negotiation of invoice-discounting facilities which allowed for growth; the large geographic area that the business served; maintaining service levels to ensure quality standards were maintained; and falling market share required significant effort to convince potential clients that Smart's unique concept of flexible working would be successful and benefit their businesses. Success factors Smart has invested pounds 350,000 in its infrastructure over the past two years.
With 1,000 flexible workers processed each week, a sophisticated IT system was needed to handle all transactions. There are plans to further develop a bespoke system, allowing clients and workers to log on via the Smart website and track their contracts. The website is a fully integrated customer relationship management system, allowing any contact with the client or worker to be tracked from appointment to the end of contract. The company also puts staff first. An annual training plan identifies training needs and ensures staff are developed to meet business needs. Alongside this is a commitment to improving working conditions for the temporary workers Smart places in jobs with clients. Traditionally agency workers had low motivation and commitment, in part due to the lack of rights and benefits they received. The result was a high level of churn, and increased costs for the businesses which employed them. The Smart model offers flexible workers not only employment rights such as holiday and sick pay, but added benefits and reward schemes. Finally, Smart is developing innovative ideas in a stale market. The large, well-established agencies provide a one-size-fits-all approach, rather than taking time to match workers to the ob. Taking away management hassles from the client means Smart can offer genuine value for money. The future Smart has several key objectives for growth over the next three years. The first is to consolidate its market-leading position in the core sector of waste management. Smart currently has approximately 15% of the market share in the waste and recycling sector and its objective is to win a much greater share. Using existing contracts and through close research of industry developments, Smart will target firms with plans to expand. Secondly, the company wants to replicate the model in food manufacturing and call centres. Smart has developed a successful business model for the waste and recycling sector which it will replicate in the two other markets. Finally, Smart has already built a strong network with 14 UK sites and wants to increase this presence in other regional UK markets. AFONWEN LAUNDRY (Pwllheli) www.afonwenlaundry.com Linen hire and laundry Established: 1935 Growth (2007-2009): 1662.8% Description Afonwen Laundry is a linen hire & laundry business that is exclusively focused on the hotel market place. It supplies over 30,000 hotel bedrooms throughout Wales, the north-west of England, Yorkshire, west Midlands, south- west England and along the M4 corridor from Cardiff to as far afield as London,See the full content of this document
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And the Fastest Growing Companies in Wales Are ...
Oxford and Southampton. The company supplies many of the leading hotel brands in the four-star corporate hotel market place as well as the fast growing, budget-hotel sectors. Processing all of the linen through stateof-the-art production facilities, Afonwen Laundry buys and rents all of the linen it processes to enable it to operate highly efficiently in offering a pooled stock of high quality linen which is shared between all of its customers in order to manage the service as efficiently as possible. The company now employs 360 people and opened in Cardiff in the summer of 2008 following a pounds 6m investment supported by Welsh Assembly Government and Finance Wales with a commitment to create 64 jobs over three years. After two years of trading in Cardiff, its South Wales business turnover is over pounds 7m a year and employs over 160 people. The company and staff are very proud of achieving this in two years since opening and its Cardiff production facility is now almost the same size as the original business based in Afonwen, Pwllheli. Origins Despite its long history - having originally supported the war effort in 1939-1945 in washing for many of the military camps - the business was mainly focused on the domestic delivery and collection service before the advent of affordable domestic washing machines. In the 1980s, it grew organically by changing its business model to focus on the hotel market place but it was not until the mid-to-late 1990s that this really started to take off helped by the opening of the A55 Expressway which enabled the business to access north-west of England hotels. The opening of its Cardiff operation two years ago transformed the business and it now supplies over 24 hotels across Cardiff as well as many of the major hotels throughout South Wales and beyond. Success factors
The company has invested over pounds 13m in building two of the most efficient laundries in the UK which can now process over 1.4million items of linen a week. Afonwen has also built strong relationships with its customers and expanded its business as the hotel market has rapidly expanded, focusing on the fastest growing segment - the budget hotel sector - and has created capacity to support the substantial growth in new hotel openings. Afonwen has a strong reputation for a high quality and reliable service which outperforms many of the more traditional operators. The future Afonwen has signed a lease to double the size of its current Cardiff production facility. The company is planning on growing its turnover from pounds 16m to over pounds 20m in the next few years through further geographic expansion. If I were economic development minister... I would recreate the Welsh Tourist Board to deliver a strong marketing voice for its hotel industry, a more coherent and aggressive marketing strategy to support the promotion of Wales as a tourist destination and support the promotion of Cardiff, in particular, as a major European capital destination that deserves a greater level of visibility on the international stage. I would ensure that any further powers given to the Assembly Government are used to maximise a culture of increasing education, investment and innovation rather than to burden the economy with further regulation or taxation which would decrease competitiveness. I would encourage wider cooperation between the private and public sectors with closer working and understanding through a programme of secondment between the two sectors so that officials have a greater commercial understanding whilst sharing knowledge from the public sectors. If I were economic development minister...I would provide technical support, advice and mentoring to Welsh businesses, provide assistance to reduce barriers to future financing and make every effort to train and improve flexibility of labour market. ELECTRO TECHNICAL SERVICES (Mechanical) LTD (Bridgend) www.electrotechnicalservices.co.uk Building services contractor Established: 2006 Growth (2007-2009): 901.5% Description Electro Technical Services (Mechanical) Ltd is one of the fastest growing building services contractors in South Wales providing mechanical design and installation services to both the private and public sector. It has an extensive client base and has completed numerous projects and clients include health authorities, local government, housing associations, leisure complexes and private housing developers. Origins Lee Turner and Phil Vaulters established the business in 2006 as a sister company to Electro Technical Services Ltd (no 9 on this year's list). Their objective was to become one of Wales' largest independent building services engineering companies. Main challenges when starting the business As with all new businesses, the early years were a series of constant challenges. Trying to obtain credit facilities with trade suppliers and banking facilities with no trading history or assets was difficult. 3 Establishing a sound financial basis for...See the full content of this document
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