Client - Fittleworth
Roles - IT Director
Fittleworth was founded in 1984 by Jaqueline and Alan Seymour. Fittleworth is one of the UK’s leading home delivery companies for stoma, continence and wound care products. Fittleworth handle over 2,000 prescriptions per day, with a turnover of over £100 Million and employing 350 staff across 38 sites across the UK.
Reporting to the Managing Director, the IT Director would have overall responsibility for a developing a future proof IT strategy which all departments would buy into. The key deliverable for this position in the first 12 months was the selection and implementation of a new ERP system as the previous one had come to the end of its lifecycle. The business had nearly doubled in size in the last 5 years and so facing consolidation challenges as well as seeking to deliver ambitious growth plans in a growing yet highly competitive market. Fittleworth sought a high calibre commercially savvy IT leader with the desire to help grow sales and profitability through the effective delivery of IT services internally. More broadly the individual needed to coach and develop a team with real potential but that was not yet at its absolute peak.
RMG recommended a Retained Executive Search (headhunting) strategy to Fittleworth. We agreed that the successful candidate did not necessarily have to come from a medical devices or healthcare company, though they would need to prove that they had a passion to learn this area. As such RMG drew up a target list of companies across a range of industry sectors within a head office within 50 mile radius of Littlehampton, with the assumption that their IT Director would likely live in this area.
The successful candidate from RMG’s Search started in post with Fittleworth in June 2019.
The feedback from the HR Director in January 2021 as to his impact after 18 months in the business is as follows;
He has driven employee engagement in the team to a new level
His technical understanding is exactly what the leader of our IT function needed
He brought with him a network of strategic partners who have immediately added value to our business