Realised
Commitment:
£20 m
Date of investment / Realisation:
2015 / 2020
Sector:
Technology services
Buy & Build:
4 completed acquisitions
“Partnering with Horizon Capital gave us the strategic, operational and financial support we needed to achieve scale in a high growth market.”
Jim DarraghTotalMobile, CEO
Background
With an increasingly mobile and tech-enabled workforce, Horizon Capital mapped the emerging Field-Service Management (FMS) software market. Totalmobile stood out as a clear leader, with a strong public sector customer base and a well-invested enterprise solution enabling workers to interact seamlessly with a variety of back office systems from their mobile device, improving productivity and quality of service. Totalmobile was acquired in 2015, after a three year courtship.
Horizon Capital identified the opportunity to broaden and modularise product functionality, target commercial customers in key verticals and switch from a one-off perpetual licence sale to a recurring Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) revenue model.
The Journey
In partnership with founder manager shareholders, incoming Chairman and new CEO, Horizon Capital helped develop a management transition plan which saw the senior team significantly strengthened – with new heads joining in engineering, sales, marketing and finance. The new team bonded well and helped drive significant improvements in customer satisfaction, product capability, revenue growth and profitability.
Horizon Capital’s decision to move from a perpetual to SaaS licence model required engineering, operational and financial investment. The switch took over three years to complete, but drove a two-fold increase in the mix of recurring revenue and unlocked long-term operational and financial advantage. The benefits of a SaaS platform were apparent during COVID, with Totalmobile launching six new micro-products tailored to customer’s evolving needs during lockdown.
Totalmobile’s go-to-market engine was completely overhauled, with modern, best practice sales and marketing practices implemented successfully, helping drive organic growth of more than 30% annually from 2017 onwards. The push into new private sector verticals including facilities management, infrastructure and construction was successful, while Totalmobile continued to grow in its core verticals including health & social services and local government.
Buy and Build
Totalmobile’s technical roadmap called for new capabilities and the adaptation of existing functionality for new verticals. Targeted M&A helped accelerate implementation of the roadmap. Four add-on acquisitions were completed bringing additional functionality (IoT capability, rostering, and lone worker assistance) and helped drive the move into verticals (facilities management and ‘blue-light’ services including police and fire).
Realisation
During the investment period, recurring revenue mix grew from 30% to 75%, revenues grew by a compound 35% and profits trebled. Totalmobile was sold to Bowmark Capital in October 2020.
News & Insights
Related Infomation
Horizon Capital announces exit from portfolio company Totalmobile
Horizon Capital, the private equity investor specialising in technology and business services, today announces the successful exit from one of its 15 portfolio companies; Totalmobile, the UK’s leading Field Service…
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Totalmobile Announces Strategic Acquisitions to Strengthen Market Share and Product Capability
Totalmobile Announces Strategic Acquisitions to Strengthen Market Share and Product Capability We are delighted to have supported our portfolio company Totalmobile, a Mobile SaaS innovator in Field Service Management (FSM) and…
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