Company profile and trading history

m-hance provides innovative business software solutions to 2400 mid-market sized organisations including Terra Firma Capital Management, Hatfield Philips International, GHF Financials, Ceridian UK, Washington Trust Bancorp Inc, United Nations Federal Credit Union, and Endsleigh Insurance. m-hance is currently supported by 230 staff from offices in Manchester, London, Loughborough, Dublin, Glasgow and the United States. m-hance also has offshore development capabilities in India which it will be investing heavily in to further increase its range of intellectual property (IP) solutions.

m-hance was formed in November 2011 and subsequently rebranded following the acquisitions of Calyx Software, Trinity Computer Services, Touchstone Group and sub-divisions of Maxima Holdings plc. These acquisitions, along with the company’s organic growth have helped sales grow 45% a year, from £3.1m in 2008 to £9.6m in 2011. m-hance’s 2012 forecast is £22.2m.

Mark Thompson, CEO of m-hance, comments “We saw a real opportunity to lead consolidation in the market place and offer a broader range of services to customers as a result. We needed to get to the size we are to give ourselves critical mass to bring new products and services to market quickly and efficiently, and next year we will hit £25m revenues and £5m EBITDA. This is a space where you can double or treble your size quite easily, and there is no doubt there will be more consolidation.”

In September 2012, m-hance was listed in The Sunday Times’ Hiscox Tech Track 100 for the first time alongside companies such as Lycamobile and MusicMagpie. m-hance was one of only three software providers to have made the prestigious list which recognises the fastest growing private technology, media and telecoms companies in the UK.

Core solutions and services
m-hance’s core solutions offering consists of financial management, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), purchasing management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM),enterprise social networking, SharePoint, business intelligence, document management and managed services in addition to software development services. The company has amassed over thirty years’ experience of operating in a variety of vertical markets including financial services, distribution, manufacturing, not-for-profit and infrastructure.

Financial Management
m-hance provides tried and tested financial accounting solutions which are highly scalable and functionality rich in order to address the needs of mid-market sized financial services organisations. Its world class ERP technology incorporates financial management and accounting, business intelligence (BI) analytics/reporting, project management, inventory, sales order processing, purchasing, CRM, e-commerce, human resource management and online business services.

These systems are scalable solutions that can be installed out-of-the-box and/or as a cloud based service for start-up and small organisations that wish to simply get on the road to better financial management. For those larger or more established organisations that wish to upgrade, replace or expand their existing ERP / financial management capabilities – m-hance offers the perfect combination of core financial accounting functionality combined with proprietary advanced modules to deliver tried and tested vertical market specific solutions, on premise or as a managed or hosted service.

Purchase Management
m-hance Purchase Management is a flexible, end-to-end solution that enables organisations to gain visibility and insight into their spend, reduce maverick buying and increase the efficiency of the whole purchasing process. Purchase Management seamlessly integrates into m-hance’s core financial accounting solutions and incorporates three core business process tools into one integrated and tailored system for:

• Requisition entry and approval
• Goods / transactions acknowledgement and receipt
• Invoice approvals

CRM
m-hance is able to deliver a fast, flexible, and affordable CRM solution that drives consistent, measurable improvements in every business process, enabling closer relationships with stakeholders and helping to achieve new levels of return. With hosted and SAAS options, organisations can take advantage of the same powerful CRM software delivered as a cloud service, enabling instant-on anywhere access, predictable pay as you go pricing, and financially backed service level agreements (SLA).

Features include:
•  Familiar CRM software that empowers people through natural, productive, and insightful experiences
• Intelligent real-time analytics and streamlined business processes that enable CRM-informed decisions and operational efficiencies
• More effective connections across people, processes, and ecosystems that allow businesses to maximise the value of relationships
m-hance has over 12 years’ experience of delivering Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions – and with a proven track record of client and project success.

Business Intelligence
m-hance is able to provide a range of business intelligence solutions based on expert analysis and extensive experience with the best business systems. This expertise covers everything from the automation and distribution of simple standard reports to more complex bespoke big data queries and dashboards. These options can be offered against a wide range of systems including those covering Finance, CRM and HR and Payroll.

Document Management and SharePoint
m-hance provides a comprehensive range of complementary solutions for organisations that require an integrated and flexible business infrastructure with the scalability, reliability, and manageability that agile businesses need to remain competitive today.

These solutions cover areas such as:
• Collaborative enterprise information
• Intranet portals based on the latest SharePoint technology
• Document management
• Workflow automation
• Application integration

Embracing enterprise social networking and mobile technologies of the future
m-hance is investing heavily in cloud, mobile and enterprise social networking solutions (ESN) to deliver further efficiency and productivity benefits for its customers. m-hance Social Business (mSB) is an internal collaboration tool that combines the best parts of social user interaction situated within a business context to improve productivity and information exchange, increase staff engagement and reduce costs.

The spirit of collaboration can certainly be found at m-hance, not least because the business grew out of the acquisition of several different software businesses a year ago. Mark Thompson, CEO of m-hance, explains:

“We know all about collaboration here because we’ve had the experience of bringing together seven different business cultures. Whenever you bring businesses together the key thing to getting value is integrating as quickly as you can. Our own system enables people to exchange information on a regular basis. Staff can be connected 24/7 online and can be constantly coming up with suggestions about how to improve productivity. It is all about engaging employees to bring together all parts of an organization, thus unifying a business.”

m-hance Social Business is available on-premise via a private cloud model, and provides secure and seamless out-of-the-box connectivity in real-time to SQL-based solutions such as accounting and CRM. mSB can also be supplied with mobile handsets, tablet devices and airtime all under one roof as part of its one-stop-shop mobile offering.

Thompson says one of the issues for the wider ESN space is that so many services are free and don’t come with any consulting options. “These services might be free but they are leaving the company to then decide exactly what it wants to do with the service which may be of little use. Implementations tend to be haphazard rather than being driven by a genuine business need leading to poor adoption and failure. You need the expertise and intelligence that goes with the product and businesses need to accept that that comes with a cost.”

mSB can be deployed in just two weeks which includes on-site training, making it incredibly cost effective compared to other ESN solutions on the market. m-hance’s unique consultative approach also ensures that it works side-by-side with its customers to tailor mSB in line with their business needs, by clearly defining benchmarks for measurable success both before, during and after implementation.