Latest news with #iplicit
Daily Record
08-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Record
East Kilbride software experts sign game-changing new partnership with Caledonia Gladiators
As part of the deal, Eureka Solutions will become an official sponsor of the Caledonia Gladiators for the upcoming 2025/26 season. Scotland's only professional basketball team has made a slam dunk in its off-court operations by signing a game-changing new partnership. Caledonia Gladiators has teamed up with fellow East Kilbride-based firm, Eureka Solutions in a partnership that will help support complex behind-the-scenes processes at the club. As part of the deal, Eureka will become an official sponsor of the Caledonia Gladiators for the upcoming 2025/26 season. Partnering with seasoned pros Eureka Solutions will play a crucial part in the Gladiators' long-term business plan: modernising its back-end financial systems to support its continued success as one of the UK's fastest growing professional sports franchises. As a trusted partner of iplicit - cloud accounting's market disruptor - Eureka enables businesses to reduce overheads, automate routine tasks, and simplify financial operations, by providing a streamlined and user-friendly platform that improves financial management. Callum Mackie, Sponsorships and Partnerships Lead at Caledonia Gladiators, said: 'We had outgrown the functionality offered by our previous software provider and were looking to find a new solution that could help modernise our systems. 'As a local company, we were aware of Eureka Solutions and its excellent reputation within the sector. iplicit was presented to us as a potential solution after an initial discussion about our goals around group reporting and group structure and we were keen to explore that option.' The project will see Caledonia Gladiators enhance back-office operations with a two-pronged solution; implementing iplicit financial software alongside its own integration tool, Besyncly, to automate manual tasks and provide consolidated reporting to support the franchise's growth. Callum added: 'Working with Eureka Solutions will really make an impact on how we run things behind the scenes. 'It'll help free up valuable time for our team, improve the accuracy of our reporting, and give us confidence that our systems can keep pace as we continue to grow. 'That kind of support is game-changing for a club with big ambitions, both on and off the court.' David Lindores, CEO at Eureka Solutions, said: 'We're proud to be partnering with a club that's breaking new ground in Scottish sport. Caledonia Gladiators' drive for operational excellence mirrors our own ethos, and we're looking forward to being part of that journey. 'As professional sports clubs continue to grow, there is increasing recognition that behind-the-scenes operations can have a significant impact on both business and team success. 'With the help of iplicit and Besyncly, we're ensuring the Gladiators are equipped with a flexible, future-proof solution. 'This project is a great example of what our team does best: solving complex integration challenges with clarity and precision. It's down to this that we've carved out a niche in the professional sports world as the go-to business solutions partner.' With plans in place for a 6,000-seat stadium, and a track record of parity across its men's and women's teams, the franchise has become a pioneer for Scottish basketball. David added: 'This is more than a sponsorship, it's a strategic partnership. The exposure is great, of course, but it's the alignment in vision and ambition that makes this such a natural fit. We're looking forward to a successful season on and off the court.' Eureka Solutions adds Caledonia Gladiators to its growing roster of professional sports organisations, including football clubs Aberdeen, Millwall, Hearts and Luton Town, as well as golfing organisation The R&A.
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How school run led CEO to 'coffee roulette' with staff and billion pound vision
Lyndon Stickley tries to 'scare a lot of people away' when he oversees first interviews for roles at cloud-accounting start-up iplicit. Yet Stickley, who bills himself as a go-to-market evangelist after successfully scaling and selling six previous companies, is far from your ruthless CEO. For the zest in which he describes his involvement with iplicit and why he won't be exiting a business for a seventh time – one of his previous projects includes London's largest graveyard – makes him a particularly charismatic leader. Hampshire-based Stickley is aiming to take the remote-first firm — he takes part in daily 'coffee roulette' mornings with employees — to unicorn status by 2030, by making it the "on-premises salvation" for mid-market businesses and their 'outdated' finance systems. Read More: Meet Britain's 'king of billboards' who sold his business for £1bn Launched in 2019, iplicit gained a top 20 place among UK firms in the FT1000 list of Europe's fastest growing businesses. Last year, the firm was one of the Sunday Times' medium business top places to work. So, to those job interviews. 'I say it might not be for you and tell them that this is a place for really passionate, slightly unhinged mountain climbers,' says Stickley, who built and sold his first company, an ISDN tech firm, for £40m before turning 30. 'If you say we are off on a mountain climb which will take three months and you might lose a finger to frostbite but we will stick a flag at the top, we are looking at the one person who will lean in where the other 19 won't.' The fact he is even discussing iplicit's marketplace rise is, he says, down to luck. 'Happenstance has been the foundation of everything,' he adds. Stickley tells the story of how Ian Andrews, an engineer by heart, spent 20 years running a company called Concept Software and becoming one of the UK's leading implementation consultancies for the likes of Oracle. He had been introduced by a friend on the school run who said he should look at Andrews' accounting software business. Shortly afterwards, Andrews spent two hours explaining to Stickley about large scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) – an area in which the serial entrepreneur had no experience. Once vendors had concluded software deals, Andrews would place people on site for up to two years and charge hundreds of thousands of pounds for implementation work. 'It was a world that blew my mind,' says Stickley. 'After 20 years, he told me, he realised he was part of the machine that was stacked against the customer, who was also getting mugged rather than it being implemented out of the box,' Stickley recalls of their first meeting. Read More: The boss who has found 'nature's answer to plastic' 'He said to me that he decided to build a better system by investing £1.5m of family savings and a friend who did the same. They carved off some engineers and created an accounting solution [iplicit] which could be deployed in days and compile reports in hours not weeks, with low disruption.' Stickley asked how many customers iplicit had, to which Andrews replied none. It was, however, the start of an unlikely relationship, given that Stickley would usually have refrained from any reckless decisions in previous investments. Having promised his friend, Stickley made some calls and was told to give it a wide berth. One final network call to a co-founder of legacy finance firm Exchequer, who he knew over 20 years previously, changed the direction. After looking at the software, he was left enthused by its power and low touch. With Stickley investing £1m into Andrews' business, iplicit swelled to around 20 staff, went to market in 2019 and immediately started winning top accountancy awards they hadn't entered. Iplicit's plan had been how to overcome the issue of customers buying finance software off an unknown player in the market. COVID not only levelled the playing field, with video meetings and iplicit's shorter implementation times, but also propelled the appeal from mounting customers who had non-cloud system issues. Iplicit realised that it could serve 100,000 sites, often multi-company locations, with a 25% market share goal and a £500m a year business. 'We couldn't have possibly contrived that [accounting software giant] Sage would drop a royal ball and not have something for the vast majority of its base,' says Stickley. The industry had also taken notice. Stickley was told by Oystein Moan – the executive chairman of Visma who took the company to unicorn status – that iplicit was a multi-million pound opportunity in the UK alone. Last year, Moan and Nic Humphries, one of the biggest private equity players in the business-to-business software space, joined iplicit's advisory board. Read More: 'Why we set up a sustainable mobile operator to save people money' Stickley's entrepreneurial spirit had been gained from his father, who had a chicken farm at 16, ran a nightclub in his twenties and worked with artists like Lulu and the Rolling Stones. Aged 17, Stickley junior took Wednesdays off sixth form college to sell kitchenware at the local market, earning £200. At university, he ran five club nights across Portsmouth in the late 1980s before his penchant for scaling businesses. 'The worst and the best I have been involved in is the most human connected and impactful business,' Stickley says of Kemnal Park, which he describes as the UK's first cemetery to celebrate life and built for people to return. 'The 'thank yous' were non stop,' he says, 'when you can see week in, week out people come back and be inspired by the place where they have buried a loved one.' Stickley met Andrews as the former was leaving the cemetery business, with iplicit planning for two years before launch. From 2006 to 2022, Stickley worked part-time three days a week. He took the helm as CEO when he realised that the business wouldn't be sold and is now working as if 'back in my twenties'. The firm has one office in Poole, Dorset with 25 employees, and around 135 working remotely. Stickley says iplicit's growth has been down to lifting the barriers of geography and has U-turned on seeing recruitment agencies as 'the enemy'. 'Getting a good recruitment pipeline means you have talent on tap when you need it,' Stickley adds. 'There's no way you can grow fast like this and do the recruitment function as you can't afford mediocrity to creep into the camp.' Iplicit's goal, he says, is to become the de facto standard in the UK before any entrance into the US. It currently serves over 43,000 daily users in over 3,000 organisations. 'We have the best tech, team and trajectory and an advantage that no one else has in the market right now,' he adds. All thanks to that school run chat and Andrews being a few months shy of running out of money before meeting iplicit's future CEO. 'What doesn't make him bonkers is he didn't go bust, so now he's a genius, right? Because he really was," says Stickley. "But if it had gone bust, he was bonkers. It was a fine line.' Coffee roulette and remote-first You value the relationships more when you don't have them on a plate every day. We get together six times a year and we all hug across 150 people as we aren't in the office getting bored with each other. The video efficiency is unbelievable. I can have 15 meetings in a day and include coffee roulette in that, which was invented by one of our techies where a random name generator pairs two people to have 20 minutes together. I found it so insightful I now have around 25 coffee roulettes a month virtually across the country. It takes the drudge out of the work and makes meetings more concise. We don't recruit younger people typically; they deserve a right of passage in an office. We are heavily biased towards over 35s as we suit the young families and older, experienced employees and appeal to an audience who don't want to commute. We measure trust by measuring outputs, not by checking in on people. Read more: The life lesson behind a 335-year-old funeral business? 'Never sleep on an argument' Meet the company that finds 'must-haves' to make everyday life easier Impossibrew CEO says Dragons' Den failure sparked alcohol-free brand's riseSign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How school run led CEO to 'coffee roulette' with staff and billion pound vision
Lyndon Stickley tries to 'scare a lot of people away' when he oversees first interviews for roles at cloud-accounting start-up iplicit. Yet Stickley, who bills himself as a go-to-market evangelist after successfully scaling and selling six previous companies, is far from your ruthless CEO. For the zest in which he describes his involvement with iplicit and why he won't be exiting a business for a seventh time – one of his previous projects includes London's largest graveyard – makes him a particularly charismatic leader. Hampshire-based Stickley is aiming to take the remote-first firm — he takes part in daily 'coffee roulette' mornings with employees — to unicorn status by 2030, by making it the "on-premises salvation" for mid-market businesses and their 'outdated' finance systems. Read More: Meet Britain's 'king of billboards' who sold his business for £1bn Launched in 2019, iplicit gained a top 20 place among UK firms in the FT1000 list of Europe's fastest growing businesses. Last year, the firm was one of the Sunday Times' medium business top places to work. So, to those job interviews. 'I say it might not be for you and tell them that this a place for really passionate, slightly unhinged mountain climbers,' says Stickley, who built and sold his first company, an ISDN tech firm, for £40m before turning 30. 'If you say we are off on a mountain climb which will take three months and you might lose a finger to frostbite but we will stick a flag at the top, we are looking at the one person who will lean in where the other 19 won't.' The fact he is even discussing iplicit's marketplace rise is, he says, down to luck. 'Happenstance has been the foundation of everything,' he adds. Stickley tells the story of how Ian Andrews, an engineer by heart, spent 20 years running a company called Concept Software and becoming one of the UK's leading implementation consultancies for the likes of Oracle. He had been introduced by a friend on the school run who said he should look at Andrews' accounting software business. Shortly afterwards, Andrews spent two hours explaining to Stickley about large scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) – an area in which the serial entrepreneur had no experience. Once vendors had concluded software deals, Andrews would place people on site for up to two years and charge hundreds of thousands of pounds for implementation work. 'It was a world that blew my mind,' says Stickley. 'After 20 years, he told me, he realised he was part of the machine that was stacked against the customer, who was also getting mugged rather than it being implemented out of the box,' Stickley recalls of their first meeting. Read More: The boss who has found 'nature's answer to plastic' 'He said to me that he decided to build a better system by investing £1.5m of family savings and a friend who did the same. They carved off some engineers and created an accounting solution [iplicit] which could be deployed in days and compile reports in hours not weeks, with low disruption.' Stickley asked how many customers iplicit had, to which Andrews replied none. It was, however, the start of an unlikely relationship, given that Stickley would usually have refrained from any reckless decisions in previous investments. Having promised his friend, Stickley made some calls and was told to give it a wide berth. One final network call to a co-founder of legacy finance firm Exchequer, who he knew over 20 years previously, changed the direction. After looking at the software, he was left enthused by its power and low touch. With Stickley investing £1m into Andrews' business, iplicit swelled to around 20 staff, went to market in 2019 and immediately started winning top accountancy awards they hadn't entered. Iplicit's plan had been how to overcome the issue of customers buying finance software off an unknown player in the market. COVID not only levelled the playing field, with video meetings and iplicit's shorter implementation times, but also propelled the appeal from mounting customers who had non-cloud system issues. Iplicit realised that it could serve 100,000 sites, often multi-company locations, with a 25% market share goal and a £500m a year business. 'We couldn't have possibly contrived that [accounting software giant] Sage would drop a royal ball and not have something for the vast majority of its base,' says Stickley. The industry had also taken notice. Stickley was told by Oystein Moan – the executive chairman of Visma who took the company to unicorn status – that iplicit was a multi-million pound opportunity in the UK alone. Last year, Moan and Nic Humphries, one of the biggest private equity players in the business-to-business software space, joined iplicit's advisory board. Read More: 'Why we set up a sustainable mobile operator to save people money' Stickley's entrepreneurial spirit had been gained from his father, who had a chicken farm at 16, ran a nightclub in his twenties and worked with artists like Lulu and the Rolling Stones. Aged 17, Stickley junior took Wednesdays off sixth form college to sell kitchenware at the local market, earning £200. At university, he ran five club nights across Portsmouth in the late 1980s before his penchant for scaling businesses. 'The worst and the best I have been involved in is the most human connected and impactful business,' Stickley says of Kemnal Park, which he describes as the UK's first cemetery to celebrate life and built for people to return. 'The 'thank yous' were non stop,' he says, 'when you can see week in, week out people come back and be inspired by the place where they have buried a loved one.' Stickley met Andrews as the former was leaving the cemetery business, with iplicit planning for two years before launch. From 2006 to 2022, Stickley worked part-time three days a week. He took the helm as CEO when he realised that the business wouldn't be sold and is now working as if 'back in my twenties'. The firm has one office in Poole, Dorset with 25 employees, and around 135 working remotely. Stickley says iplicit's growth has been down to lifting the barriers of geography and has U-turned on seeing recruitment agencies as 'the enemy'. 'Getting a good recruitment pipeline means you have talent on tap when you need it,' Stickley adds. 'There's no way you can grow fast like this and do the recruitment function as you can't afford mediocrity to creep into the camp.' Iplicit's goal, he says, is to become the de facto standard in the UK before any entrance into the US. It currently serves over 43,000 daily users in over 3,000 organisations. 'We have the best tech, team and trajectory and an advantage that no one else has in the market right now,' he adds. All thanks to that school run chat and Andrews being a few months shy of running out of money before meeting iplicit's future CEO. 'What doesn't make him bonkers is he didn't go bust, so now he's a genius, right? Because he really was," says Stickley. "But if it had gone bust, he was bonkers. It was a fine line.' Coffee roulette and remote-first You value the relationships more when you don't have them on a plate every day. We get together six times a year and we all hug across 150 people as we aren't in the office getting bored with each other. The video efficiency is unbelievable. I can have 15 meetings in a day and include coffee roulette in that, which was invented by one of our techies where a random name generator pairs two people to have 20 minutes together. I found it so insightful I now have around 25 coffee roulettes a month virtually across the country. It takes the drudge out of the work and makes meetings more concise. We don't recruit younger people typically; they deserve a right of passage in an office. We are heavily biased towards over 35s as we suit the young families and older, experienced employees and appeal to an audience who don't want to commute. We measure trust by measuring outputs, not by checking in on people. Read more: The life lesson behind a 335-year-old funeral business? 'Never sleep on an argument' Meet the company that finds 'must-haves' to make everyday life easier Impossibrew CEO says Dragons' Den failure sparked alcohol-free brand's rise
Press and Journal
22-05-2025
- Business
- Press and Journal
Aberdeen duo turn redundancy shock into thriving tech business
Exactly 10 years ago Aberdeen IT workers Kevin Wyness and Mike Charles turned up to the office only to discover their security passes no longer worked and they'd been locked out of their building. Deemed 'at risk of redundancy', their lives were put on hold and they spent a month meeting up around the city for coffee and scones – and coming up with a Plan B. 'It was surreal,' says Kevin, 'One moment we were running projects, the next we couldn't even get through the front door. We hadn't even been told, we were just locked out.' During their meetups the pair plotted their comeback. 'We joked at first – we were basically just moaning about how unfair it was,' Kevin recalls. When confirmation came they were to be made redundant, Escone Solutions was born – named in honour of those early 'scone and coffee' planning sessions. Fast forward a decade, and Escone Solutions now employs 17 people and supports major clients across the UK and Ireland. The company provides specialist business application support, focusing on financial systems like OpenAccounts and eBIS, through its flagship service Escone Assist. Their clients include ScotRail, DFS, West Midlands Trains, and other national operators. But Kevin admits the first few months were brutal. 'We were working from back rooms of cafés, chasing leads, scraping together any work we could,' he says. 'By December, we had £29 left in the bank. 'Mike was working nights at Tesco, and I was putting up fences with my brother-in-law. We were literally about to give up.' But then, an email changed everything. A former colleague offered them a modest contract worth £350 a day between them. 'We dropped everything and took it,' Kevin says. 'It was the turning point and we did a really good job. 'Then, through word-of-mouth, we got some pretty decent contracts and the business just grew.' Escone Solutions has built a reputation not just for its technical expertise, but for its people-first approach. 'What myself and Mike had said was we would never treat anyone the way we had been treated during our redundancy,' says Kevin. 'We have empathy for people.' The company blends experienced business analysts with a pipeline of young talent, as an apprenticeship training provider. 'It's quite a young team,' says Kevin. 'We've got 50% graduates and 50% young people who we take on and give an apprenticeship. 'We make sure they follow the apprenticeship, that we get them through as well as learning how to work our way. 'We are really passionate about developing people as well as developing our business.' One of their early apprentices, Alice Cassie, now holds a senior leadership role as head of consultancy. Escone has also recently partnered with iplicit, a next-generation financial management system, as part of a strategy to future-proof the business and extend their reach into new markets. Despite Escone's success, the founding values remain the same: work hard, treat people fairly, and never forget where you started. 'The way we were let go – we said we'd never treat anyone like that,' Kevin reflects. 'We've had no salaries at times, we've worked through every setback. But we stuck with it. And now, we've built something we're really proud of.'
Finextra
14-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Iplicit partners GoCardless for in-app direct debit functionality
Cloud accounting fintech has announced a new update to its product, in partnership with bank payment provider GoCardless. iplicit, which is purpose-built for the UK and Ireland's mid-market, will bring GoCardless' Direct Debit capabilities to customers using its cloud accounting platform. 0 This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author. The arrival of GoCardless' Direct Debit features follows the successful roll-out of its open banking-powered Instant Bank Pay to iplicit customers in the first quarter of 2025. Organisations using iplicit will now benefit from a simple in-app interface for managing and automating their Direct Debit payments, powered by GoCardless, with features such as: • Automatic scheduling for one-off or recurring payments on invoice due dates, minimising late payments • Automated payment collection and reconciliation, reducing time-consuming financial admin thanks to connections with over 350 GoCardless partners • User-friendly payment set up, allowing for easy and secure collection of payment details online via customisable payment page or payment link • Payment tracking and visibility, allowing collection at first time of asking and using payment intelligence to retry failed payments at optimal times Direct Debit payments are pull based, meaning that iplicit users, as merchants, initiate the payment once given a mandate by their customer. Direct Debit payments are also bank-to-bank, with no card networks - and the associated high fees - involved. By adding GoCardless' Direct Debit capabilities to Instant Bank Pay, iplicit can now offer busy businesses one place to manage recurring and one-off payments, helping them streamline their operations to save time and money. iplicit announced the extension of its partnership with GoCardless at Accountex in London's ExCel. Having collected its own payments via GoCardless since 2019, the award-winning accounting software provider is confident that the partnership will answer the Direct Debit needs of its midmarket customer base. This includes customers across a variety of verticals, such as non-profit, recruitment, education, fintech, SaaS, and multi-academy trusts. Paul Sparkes, Chief Product Officer at iplicit adds: 'At iplicit, we prioritise listening to the needs of our midmarket customers to continually refine our product and identify ways of improving their day-to-day financial admin and cashflow.' 'Our ongoing partnership with GoCardless, a leader in the payments space, allows us to offer exactly what these customers need, which is a straightforward, seamless, and reliable solution for automating and collecting Direct Debit payments. This eliminates the inefficiencies and errors common with manual payment collection and chasing of failed or missed payments. Merchants using iplicit can now enjoy reliable cashflow and added confidence when managing their recurring payments.' Born in the cloud, iplicit's state-of-the-art platform is specifically tailored for businesses that have outgrown basic entry-level systems or grown frustrated with legacy on-premises vendors. It delivers the advanced functionality and performance of upmarket systems at a fraction of the cost and complexity. Tom Metcalfe, Director, UK&I Partnerships at GoCardless, said: 'We're excited to follow our successful introduction of Instant Bank Pay with this Direct Debit integration. iplicit customers now have an all-in-one solution for recurring and one-off payments, directly within a platform they know and trust. This will help them get paid on time, save time and money, and win and retain more customers.'
