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Our first moves involved 'folding in' a number of smaller Records Management firms. Typically in that industry customers tend to be very 'sticky': they tend not to leave a supplier once they have a relationship ongoing. So the easiest way for us to grow that side of the business was clearly through acquisitions.

We were finding that many of their customers were looking for both a higher level of service than they might previously have been getting, and also a wider level of national coverage across mainland Britain. So that first drive for us was all about getting more sites across the country. This in turn led to cost benefits for us and our clients in terms of IT and infrastructure rationalisation. From that start we've bought upwards of 20 companies over the last five years or so, predominantly in the RM space. Along the way, we found there were a number of ancillary services which fitted in very well with our overall direction.

DT: How have you been able to decide what sort of services would best complement the existing RM focus?
CS: Obviously we had our own scanning business in place already - which at that time wasn't particularly strong, but fit quite neatly alongside the rest of the business. We've developed a shredding capability, partly through acquisitions, but also as we've built our facilities we've been able to show some organic growth in that area.

We also bought a RM business which had its own relocation business, and it became clear that in fact the customer for both of those businesses was essentially the same. That firm and another office removals company we bought had both slightly 'fallen into' the Records Management business - as you might imagine, their customers were increasingly saying "Can you clear our offices for us - oh, and could you also store our documents somewhere?"

DT: What is your route to market? Is it a conventional IT sale or is it more of an office service channel?
CS: The Facilities Manager who looks after an office move may very well be the person responsible for storing the company's physical documents. By extension they will also then be responsible for looking at retention and destruction - i.e. shredding. Other business opportunities we're exploiting are IT relocation - which again obviously fits closely with the office relocation side of things - and a couple of years ago we also moved into IT recycling. Often when a business is moving, that's the time when they wonder what to do about all their ageing computer equipment.

DT: With so much M&A activity in the last five years, you must have become a significant player in the market?
CS: Undoubtedly: we'd say that within the RM market space we are comfortably number two in the UK at present, nearly twice the size of our nearest competitor. Even in shredding we're probably number three nationally. In scanning, following the acquisition of Cintas, we think we're probably number two in the UK now in traditional bureau terms - though obviously that area is a little harder to make meaningful comparisons in as it's a far more complex market in terms of the offerings available.

In addition to that we're number one in office relocation, and we're a reasonable player in both IT relocation and IT recycling. Being able to offer such a wide range of services right across the country obviously makes us attractive to lots of clients who want to be able to use one supplier for more than one thing. All our customers are on one single CRM database - so if I'm a shredding salesman looking at selling into a particular corporation or NHS Trust, for example, I can look on our systems and see that perhaps we moved their office last year, or we stored their patient records - I have immediate access to the key people within that prospective client organisation.

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