Interim Management Activity Through 2013

We are now well in to 2014 and the new tax year has already begun.

Like many businesses, the start of a new year sees new business plans as thoughts turn towards capitalising on opportunities and building towards a successful year ahead – and our business is no different.

Looking back through 2013 as we compiled the business plan for this year ahead, we spent some time analysing where the opportunities had come from through the year; were there any obvious trends for specific functional experience? How much did location factor in activity? What level of roles were we seeing a greater frequency of?

What we found was a little surprising and the potential impact of this on the Interim Management market through 2014 was something we wanted to share with you. What we found of particular interest are the following findings:

  1. Of all the interim briefs we were engaged on through 2013, 43% of the opportunities required senior executives at, or above, the £1,000 per day mark
  2. The percentage of roles we were engaged on at day rates (to the interim manager) ranging from £750 – £999 per day was 31%
  3. And finally, the percentage of roles engaged on at day rates ranging £500 – £749 per day was only 26%

These numbers alone make interesting reading, but when you also consider the spread of functional expertise, it tells us that although there is a perceived bias of activity towards topic areas such as e-commerce and digital, the actual requirements across the sector are spread reasonably evenly:

  1. CEO/MD or appointment at board level: 15%
  2. Finance (exc board level): 19%
  3. Project/programme management: 15%
  4. Technical operations: 9%
  5. Supply chain/logistics: 14%
  6. Sales and partner management/multi-channel: 11%
  7. Marketing: 4%
  8. Human resources: 6%
  9. Internal IT: 4%
  10. Other: 3%

So what does all this mean?

Well, the first interesting point to make is that businesses across the tech sector had a relatively even spread of needs in terms of functional expertise and perhaps more interestingly, the seniority of interim managers required was at the higher end of the day rate scale than we would have anticipated.

Our view, broadly speaking, is that despite the economic backdrop remaining challenging, businesses still have the need and appetite to invest in executive leadership, change delivery personnel and subject matter experts around key projects and programmes.

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