The founder of a leading facilities management tech business is planning to hire 50 people and will launch a predictive maintenance platform later this year.
Cloudfm, which featured on our PropTech 50 ranking last year, grew from Jeff Dewing鈥檚 garden shed into a 拢65 million turnover company.
Dewing, whose story was featured in our sister publication TechBlast last year, is a self-made serial entrepreneur who then had to reimagine his business when COVID-19 slashed its monthly sales from 拢6m to 拢200k.
Having somehow doubled EBITDA to 拢4m during the pandemic – while keeping turnover at 拢50m – he expects the respective figures to hit 拢5.8m and 拢60m by July this year.聽
鈥淲e expect to be at 160 staff by July and will look to hire a further 50 people over the next couple of years – typically in IT and development,鈥� Dewing told 老九品茶Cloud.
Dewing鈥檚 book outlines the principle of flipping scenarios on their head to achieve success and happiness in both business and life.
He was motivated to found Cloudfm by the 鈥渓ies and deceit鈥� that he says are endemic in the FM industry, with engineers and suppliers exaggerating time on the job to inflate their income and avoid tricky questions.聽
鈥淚t鈥檚 not down to bad people, but the tools they are given,鈥� he explained. 鈥淚f an engineer arrives late, someone will change the time because they want to meet their KPIs… data is being played about with all the time.
鈥淥ur technology is designed to be utterly transparent – good, bad or ugly, you鈥檙e going to see it. If they were only there for an hour and a half, that鈥檚 what it says – so that鈥檚 all you can charge for.
鈥淭here’s only one version of truth: everybody sees it, because you can’t edit or touch any of our data. No one can delete it.鈥�
He adds: 鈥淭he technology was built to influence behaviour. Everyone’s trying to procure on an hourly rate – but if the plumber at 拢38 an hour takes three hours to do the job and the one at 拢40 takes one hour, how do you compare that before it’s happened? You can’t measure value – you can only measure cost. Whatever you spend on an hourly rate will have no impact or influence on what you spent at the end of the year – it’s the behaviour of the people conducting the work.聽
鈥淓very engineer that ever goes to a site to fix a problem is controlled by the service sheet he or she fills in. That piece of paper dictates his salary – he’s incentivised to go a little bit beyond the truth. And that’s what we’ve all been doing for 50 years. That鈥檚 the way the world works.鈥�
Dewing鈥檚 next baby is a predictive maintenance platform, Mindsett, which has been in R&D for two years and will launch officially later this year.
鈥淲e鈥檝e partnered with Essex University to build IoT (Internet of Things) that goes beyond anything else in the market,鈥� he explained. 鈥�There are numerous pilots running now.
鈥淲e expect Mindsett and Cloudfm to create a valuation of 拢200m by 2025.鈥�
He adds: 鈥淲e are also looking to launch our Freedom platform 2.0, which will include a marketplace model never before seen in this industry.鈥�