Creating ClearCourse: our M&A approach with Josh Rowe

At the heart of our mission to bring together the best people and software to get the very best outcomes for customers is a focused and driven mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategy.

Every day, the ClearCourse M&A team scours the country, identifying and having conversations about the right businesses to bring into the group – with a target of 40 new acquisitions in the next four years.

The business was launched in 2018 with a proactive buy-and-build strategy; a focus that hasn’t really changed in the almost five years and nearly 40 acquisitions that have followed.

“We look to buy businesses that have at least £1m turnover, and they all have a certain theme – and that theme focuses on payments,” says Joshua Rowe, ClearCourse’s Head of M&A.

“We look for software businesses that enable customers of those businesses to transact, usually by a card or sometimes direct debits.

“That then guides you towards software that’s used in consumer-based transactions – golf clubs, pharmacies, clinics, restaurants and retail stores, for example.”

The importance of payments

The payments aspect is important to any acquisition because of ClearAccept, ClearCourse’s own payments solution.

ClearAccept is integrated into the software to process payments – but that payments opportunity is only part of the story when the M&A team is identifying businesses to bring into the group.

The businesses ClearCourse targets tend to be mature and established in their markets.

“The reason for that is that we want businesses that are stable, have a good management team in place and are making money, so are positively profitable.

“We’re not looking to buy early-stage venture capital businesses – we’re generally looking for reasonably established businesses that have a strong vertical sector alignment that differentiates them, and have customers who value their solution in the long-term.”

The ClearCourse vision: working better together

From the perspective of a potential acquisition, there’s a lot to be gained.

Our payments solution, ClearAccept, enables businesses to offer their customers an excellent payments experience – something which is sometimes overlooked when designing customer journeys and creating customer experience.

“We’re not disruptive when we acquire a business,” says Joshua.

“A lot of the businesses we acquire are family owned or run. They started small and have grown, and people have a lot of attachment to them. They don’t want to sell to a company that will come in and dismantle it.

“When we buy businesses that resonate in their marketplace, we keep them as standalone brands. We want the management team to stay in place – they’re the ones who know the business – and we provide centralised back office services to ease that admin burden.

“This lets them focus on what they are good at, which is usually product development, customer relationships and sales.”

Those back office functions include HR, compliance and financial reporting, which, together with the integration of ClearAccept, can provide a tremendous foundation for future growth.

If needed, new acquisitions can also benefit from our in-house marketing, branding and communications resources, and a go-to-market strategy that relaunches the business to the industry will be developed to ensure the right messages are being communicated.

The benefits of being part of the ClearCourse group

As well as helping to realise a business’ potential, being part of the ClearCourse family of brands does offer several additional benefits.

Being part of the group means there’s significant support – both in terms of personnel and finances. Opportunities to grow the business are always sought, and good ideas are backed.

The businesses that join ClearCourse also come into a driven and forward-thinking environment, which means there are always opportunities to have conversations and gain insights and ideas from other ClearCourse businesses at a group level, too.

After all, our brand motto is ‘working better together’.