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About

Professional Services Team

Our Professional Services team have amassed many years experience across numerous business sectors. Management Consultancy (P&L, Profitability etc), Bookkeeping, Operations, Sales, Marketing and CRM are our core competencies. GMS are available for one particular specialism, or for a combination covering a number of business disciplines.

Keeping it Simple

We strive to makes things as simple as possible, with clear and honest lines of communication. GMS will recommend the “top wins” to improve your business, and won’t dilute these by making too many complicated changes at once. Change. Test. Measure Results. Setting simple, clear objectives from the outset often delivers the best outcome for our clients.

dave-clapp

Dave Clapp – Key Specialism – Management & Business Consultancy

Dave has over 25 years management experience gained via his employment in the Insurance Industry, he has an exemplary record for delivery via teams of people.

He spent the early part of his career (1992 to 2003) with Swinton Insurance working his way up from the branch network to reporting to the board and running their inbound national call centre in Manchester.

In 2003 Dave set up The County Group and he has spent the last 16 years leading the group to in excess of £100m turnover operating from 30 locations, with a team of in excess of 300 people. Dave and his management team sold The County Group in Jan 2018 to Global risk partners.

During this time Dave has successfully purchased 22 businesses, so is very well versed in the acquisition process from an emotive perspective (this should never be overlooked), as well as the technical details of producing the investment hypothesis tendering funding, through to the legal side of things and then finally the integration.

Dave also holds directorships in property companies, a football club and is an investor in a multi site retail business too so has a great deal of experience outside of the insurance industry.

If you’d like to contact Dave, please email dave@gmsprofessionalservices.co.uk

 

 

tim-crighton

Tim Crighton – Key Specialism – Marketing Consultancy

Tim has been a marketing professional throughout his career. He went to the University of Huddersfield and graduated with a 2:1 Marketing BA (Hons) and subsequently gained a Marketing Diploma.

His first marketing role was at Canon UK and he worked his way up to Senior Product Manager in record time, and then spent 9 months doing the same role for Canon Australia in Sydney.

Other jobs have included marketing within a large telecoms and IT consulting company, retail & online marketing for EE, before turning his hand to European property investment publishing/marketing, running a team of 20.

Tim spent 8 years as marketing director of a leading insurance broker, his team delivering 40,000+ marketing enquiries per year and rebranding several new acquisitions.

Tim has spent the last 2 ½ years running his own Marketing Consultancy,  and has clients such as Anthesis, Cheshire Vehicle Rental, SEP Professional Services, GlycaNova, Burland Excursions, Revelation Properties, The InsureLife Group, Lawtons Plumbing and Heating and MLC Construction.

Tim has deep expertise in both digital, traditional (print) and social media marketing.

If you’d like to contact Tim, please use the contact form.

 

 

Dave Herd 1

Dave Herd – Key Specialism – Operations & Compliance

He left school at 16, keen to pursue his business career and start earning cash. Dave was accepted onto the Swinton apprentice scheme and earnt his 2 year apprenticeship with flying colours, covering the full spectrum of insurance disciplines – sales, customer service, operations and compliance.

The latter two skills would go on to form the cornerstone of his career, but not without some hugely beneficial sales skills beforehand. It is this time in sales that Dave credits for his love of operations & compliance as in his words “seeing and working in front end Sales first hand allowed me to really understand how important the back end of operations and compliance is to really make sure the customer is at the centre of everything a company does.”

Dave spent about 10 years in a variety of sales positions, managing sales teams with aggressive sales targets. This was at Swinton Insurance and then The County Group.

He then became Operations Director at The County Group, also managing the compliance function, and was responsible for over 20 branches and 200+ staff. A large part of this role was integrating new acquisitions into the group, covering systems, people, terms of business, customer service and training/development.

Since leaving The County Group in 2018, Dave is now a freelance Operations and Compliance consultant, working closely with GMS Professional Services and their customers.

Please use the contact form if you’d like to speak with Dave Herd.

 

 

louise-burns

Louise Burns – Key Specialism – Bookkeeping and Payroll

Louise has 15 years experience in the bookkeeping and payroll field, helping many companies improve their accounting functions, or managing it on their behalf via outsourcing.

She has run the bookkeeping and payroll functions for a variety of different companies from different sectors, from SMEs through to multi site corporate businesses.

“Numbers people” are often (unfairly) categorised as having lower than average people skills, but this isn’t the case with Louise who is a real hands-on people person who builds strong relationships quickly.

She is at the forefront of the government led Making Tax Digital initiative, and has the latest cloud based accounting accreditations.

Please use the contact form if you’d like an initial conversation about bookkeeping and/or payroll with Louise.

 

Jon Gold 4

Jon Gold – Key Specialism – Operations, Sales and Planning Delivery

Jon Gold is one of the leading figures in Operations, Sales & Planning Delivery in the North West.

His vast experience includes the development and rebranding of a national chain of Bars and leisure outlets with multi million pound turnover, founding a national music merchandise brand with numerous retail outlets and developing leading multi-product e-commerce websites.

He has a wealth of experience in the Leisure, Entertainment and Retail sector and was also president of The Music Industries Association for many years.

Delivery is also a key attribute of Jon’s, with Enterprise Resource Planning skills including software, warehousing and logistics.

Jon is also a key part of his local community and was for many years Chairman of Nantwich Town Football club, overseeing the most successful period in the clubs history with numerous promotions (currently tier 7), reaching the first round proper of the FA Cup and a number of Cheshire Senior Cup trophies. All this while keeping the club in good financial health. He is still an active Director of the club.

A Charismatic personality, sincere and well connected, his sales, presentation and delivery skills are an asset to any business.