Lyceum Capital invests in TotalMobile
Lyceum Capital, the growth investor, has completed its MBO of TotalMobile, the market-leading developer of enterprise mobility software. The investment is Lyceum’s third in two months and will fund further product development and expand its market presence within the UK and internationally.
The Belfast-based business, whose software is used by over 30,000 workers in more than 200 organisations in the public and private sectors, has grown quickly over the past four years to become a leading player in the enterprise mobility market with revenues of £15m.
Its product suite, which can be cloud-based, on-premise or SaaS-delivered, is designed to enable better mobile working, data capture and workflow management, delivering improved productivity, efficiency and service levels for staff and end customers.
The business has developed a market-leading position in local government and healthcare, where its customers include Fife Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Bristol Community Health and Virgin Care. It has also recently expanded further into the private sector across utilities, engineering and facilities management, with customers such as Allianz Engineering and Clancy Docwra.
TotalMobile’s success has been driven by accelerating usage of mobile devices and the growing trend towards mobile working, as more and more organisations across the public and private sectors adopt agile working practices in order to improve processes and to retain and attract talent. The UK’s mobile workforce population is estimated to be 4.1m, with related annual IT spend at £4.5bn.
Its mobile-first approach to enterprise software design, which is based on improving the experience for the user, has enabled TotalMobile to differentiate itself from traditional back-end driven enterprise solutions and capture market share quickly. Its products are designed to work across all devices, smartphones and tablets.
The investment by Lyceum will enable the company to accelerate its new product development — including additional functionality and an enhanced SaaS proposition — as well as expanding into new vertical sectors and overseas markets through its partnership channel.
Martin Wygas, investment director at Lyceum Capital, alongside Geoff Neville, operations and development partner at Lyceum Capital, will join the board of the business. Tom Keen, investment executive, was also part of the deal team.
Commenting on the investment, Martin Wygas said: “TotalMobile is a classic software success story, whose growth has been driven by a dedication to customer-focused design. This has given the business a genuine point of difference, resulting in impressive growth. We see enormous opportunity to develop further their world-class software business in the social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) market over the coming years working alongside a first-class management team.”
TotalMobile is led by CEO Colin Reid, supported by sales and marketing director Ronnie Geddis, product director Bill Surgin, chief technology officer Gareth Tolerton, chief financial officer Geoff Henderson and chief operations officer, Malcolm Thompson.
Colin Reid said: “Partnering with a firm like Lyceum, and bringing individuals like Geoff and Martin onto our board, gives us the strategic, operational and financial support we need to achieve scale in a high growth market. Lyceum has an excellent track record of growing successful global technology firms, which makes them the ideal partner.
“With a growing imperative to drive cost savings in local government, the impact of the Five Year Forward View in the UK healthcare market and the continuing trend of mobile working in the private sector, we have the perfect platform to position TotalMobile for growth as the market’s first choice for customer-focused enterprise mobility software.”
Lyceum’s previous investments in the technology sector include business software developer Access Group, which doubled revenues and trebled profits prior to its sale in January to TA Associates. Current technology investments include management software business Isotrak, online security product developer Clearswift, managed IT infrastructure services business Adapt and the leading provider of financial research and fund analytics Style Research, a deal that was announced last week.
Lyceum was advised on the transaction by Smith Square Partners (corporate finance), EY (commercial due diligence), Pinsent Masons (legal), and PwC (financial due diligence).
