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Employee Acquisition Experience: Craig from Wynne Systems

Today we are talking to Craig Richmond who is the product manager at Wynne Systems for the Rental Result product.

Rental Result was acquired in late 2015. Previous to that, I had been involved in many discussions with other companies regarding the purchase of the company and those dragged on and on. It was nice to see that when I was involved in talks with senior management at Volaris, within a week a deal had been struck – all the uncertainty that we went through before, had ended. So we actually had a time for planning and a time to move forward.

It was also comforting when directors came across from Wynne in the US, that they talked about their experiences with their takeover and how they were in the exact same situation as we were and they had concrete plans to put in place exactly what needed to be done. Twelve months later, we can actually see the fruits of our labour and we’ve been able to turn the company around as a result of their help.

Personally, I do feel that I’ve learned more in the past year and acquired a wide range of skills – on the financial metrics side, talking more to customers, understanding the products – than I probably have done in the last 5-10 years. As a result of that, I feel much better equipped to perform my role than I did in previous years.

Setting targets was a big part of turning the company around and putting those metrics in place to achieve the targets. Sometimes when people hear about metrics, they get scared because they wonder what the metrics actually involve, but actually having something to track, understanding why you’re not hitting it, actually feeling good about it when you are hitting it, made a really big difference to the team. They’re all interested to see how they do on a monthly basis and it really does drive the team forward as well.

It also forms part of the overall strategy to see where you fit in inside the company and where the other departments fit in as well. That way, it feels like everything is culminating together. While previously, with no targets in place, the company had drifted. Even though we had more members of staff, we were nowhere near as efficient.

I found out about the acquisition a day before I met John Bureau and Ken Slaughter (from Wynne and Volaris respectively). Again it was nice to have a conversation and talk about their aims for the company. I remember Ken saying look, we’re going to leave you to run the company as you have been doing with a set of metrics to guide you. The fact that from the senior management to general manager to directors, everyone had a plan in place with what we were going to do and how we were going to achieve it. Now to actually see that that plan is working is the best bit of all.

About the Author

Brian Beattie is the Chief Financial Officer at Volaris Group. Besides overseeing the financial health of the company, he works closely with Volaris’ legal and M&A team on all new acquisitions. Brian is an expert on every stage of the M&A process – from sending out the non-disclosure agreement to executing the sales purchase agreement.

Profile Photo of Brian Beattie