How a consultancy increased its capacity to grow

Salentis – Managing ops to increase capacity for growth

Salentis is a bid writing consultancy that delivers winning proposals for its clients across the globe. It is an international company with three bases in the US/Americas, Australia/NZ and UK/Europe. There is a small core of 12 people spread across the three continents with the UK most recently set up at the beginning of 2018.

The Issue

Richard, the GM for UK/Europe and COO for the larger business, was managing all aspects of the UK business, from business development, to delivering projects and all the surrounding support activities. In addition, being the COO placed other global demands on him.

It came to a head in the autumn of 2019 when he was trying to juggle the above whilst managing two projects concurrently. He started making mistakes in the accounts such as making duplicate payments to associates, not paying others, being distracted on client site and not being able to spend enough time on business development.

He was over-worked and hated making silly mistakes. He was tired and it was distracting him from what he loved about the business which is delivering top quality results for his clients. Managing all aspects of the business was impacting the business' capacity for growth.

The Solution

Richard was looking for three outcomes:

• To increase capacity to enable the business to grow.

• To give the business greater redundancy, so someone else could take over from him when he was unavailable

• To be able to run multiple projects concurrently without it being at the expense of his personal and family life.

  
  

Why Karen

Karen was brought in for a number of reasons:

• She had experience working in consultancy businesses and had been a director of a small software testing consultancy, so she understood how they work

• She had a great deal of operational experience, having set up and run systems and processes for consulting businesses

• She could be trusted to get on with a range of activities without having to be guided

• As an experienced business owner who has worked with a number of businesses and she had valuable business insight to add to the business that went beyond operations.

  
  

Delivery

Karen brought order, process, discipline and challenge to Salentis UK.

• She managed all operational aspects of client projects (from onboarding associates, tracking the projects to invoicing) leaving Richard free to concentrate on delivery and business development.

• As a trusted member of the team, it allowed Richard to get back his life knowing that everything was ticking along without him when he was on client site.

• Salentis UK had the capacity to deal with more business and generate greater turnover.

• She brought a significant amount of useful professional knowledge that went beyond operations and was an excellent sounding board, challenging the status quo to improve the business.

• She provided a huge amount of input into marketing, resulting in a rebrand of the business, a change in marketing comms and managed the revamping of their website.

• Richard gained back 40 hours a month which has enabled him to concentrate on strategic initiatives such as Cyber Security and business development.

• In 2024 Karen built and implemented Capsule CRM to manage sales, project delivery and recruitment across all three regions.

  
  

Testimonial

“Karen has brought order, process, discipline and challenge to Salentis UK.She manages all operational aspects of client projects (from onboarding associates, tracking the projects to invoicing) leaving me free to concentrate on delivery and business development.She is a trusted member of the team and that has allowed me to get back my life knowing that everything is ticking along without me when I’m awaySalentis UK now has the capacity to deal with more business and generate greater turnover”

Richard Haldenby – CEO