Crime reduction business looks international for growth

Recipero, the Gloucester-based business which collects and securely stores information about serial numbered property, everything from mobile phones to power tools, has been bought by its management team, Les Gray and Steve Shepherd, from the American company that acquired it in 2016.

Recipero collects transaction data involving identifiable property.

Everything from retail sale to loss and theft reports and second-hand trade is collected, building a unique history of each article.

Co-owner and Chief Operating Officer, Les Gray, described what the business does as “similar to the vehicle checks we’re all familiar with, but for everything else, revealing outstanding finance, loss theft or other factors that a potential buyer should be wary of.”

The company’s customers include all UK law enforcement agencies, the largest online retailers and every responsible high street name which offers trade-in or trade-up of consumer electronics.

Recipero provides around five million checks a month when devices change hands, and its ecosystem combines this with data from insurers, police and the public to determine the legitimacy of goods they are buying, prevent insurance fraud and putting the police in contact with the rightful owners.

Les and Steve share decades of technology experience and were programmers of the first versions of the software that forms the basis for Recipero today.

“We have seen growing interest in our ecosystem throughout international law enforcement agencies,” said Les. “The UK is a leading example of what can be achieved through sharing of non-personal data between government, business and consumers. Our new independent status allows us to capitalise on this interest to accelerate international growth.”

Recipero has been growing at a rate of around 25 per cent a year, and turnover last year was just under £5 million.

Tom Henson, Client Services Director at the technology outsourcing company

First Solution, talks about how a modern workplace strategy can transform a business’s operation.

It is clear that technology has hugely impacted people’s personal lives enormously over the past 20 years. We are now able to communicate instantaneously with our family and friends across the world, have an encyclopaedia of information available at our fingertips, and even have the ability to control much of our environment by using only our voices. By some estimates, change is happening ten times faster and at 300 times the rate of the First Industrial Revolution. Many experts are calling this change the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

However, often these changes are not touching people’s business lives to the same degree. Many business working environments do not look that much different to what was being employed in the year 2000.

Tom Henson: ‘I talk to many businesses who haven’t changed the way they work much, if at all in the past 20 years. As much as they have tried to adapt to new technology, most of their staff working environments still consist of word processing, spreadsheets and email. I don’t think this is their fault, in my opinion the technology industry has done a bad job in helping them through the process.’

‘The good thing, however, is that the big technology providers have realised this and changed their approach. They have spent years, and millions of pounds developing technology and now they realise that’s not of much use unless businesses are using it’

Tom Henson, Client Services Director, First Solution

‘Take for example Office 365. This has been a resounding success for Microsoft, at least in the fact that it’s had a very high adoption rate in business. But if you look at the elements of the service businesses are using, it’s a very small proportion of what the product can do – it is still generally Word, Excel and Outlook. However, Microsoft have realised this is a problem and are looking to address it.’

First Solution are working with Microsoft to help businesses adopt a Modern Workplace strategy. By fully utilising platforms such as the Microsoft 365 platform, a business can fundamentally change the way their staff work and give them the technology to make them more dynamic and productive.

‘We are saying to our customers – you are sitting on a goldmine. You have already got the technology in your business, ready to go. With First Solution’s expertise on how to employ this technology to solve your business challenges you can give your staff the tools to excel in their roles.’

“We’ve had some great results working with our customers on adopting a Modern Workplace strategy. By laying a solid foundation for their business operations using a technology like Office 365, businesses can do things they never thought imaginable, like automating processes within a couple of days, or enabling team working and collaboration overnight.”

Tom Henson, Client Services Director First Solution Technologies

If you are an organisation who is looking to grow and are interested in how technology could potentially help you scale up then the team at First Solution are the people to talk to. Contact Tom Henson on 01242 335 549.