Co-Managing Director UK for leading social housing systems provider

Aareon AG is a Mainz, Germany headquartered leading provider of systems and consulting services for the European real estate industry.

The organisation operates from 30 locations in six European countries. The UK operation comprises two businesses, one of which was acquired.

Aareon’s Head of International Operations contacted Spectrum to conduct a search for a Co-Managing Director for the UK organisation. The appointee would be responsible for the acquired business, and tasked with the commercial development of its digital solutions.

Spectrum ran the search in two stages. The first stage focussed tightly on providers of IT software and services solution to the UK’s social housing sector – Aareon’s core market, and a significant one: 1 in 6 people in the UK live in social housing which is provided by an array of housing associations primarily.

Whilst we found many capable executives within this market, they tended to replicate the skillset Aareon already possessed in the UK team. What the business really needed to drive new growth, was a leader with a contemporary digital and mobile applications skillset that could be successfully transferred to our client.

Accordingly, we repositioned the search to deliberately focus on executives from outside the social housing IT world, and to instead focus on executives who had led the digital transformation of other B2B markets.

The appointed candidate, Nigel Rees, was recruited from the Civil Service. Prior to this, he has led the growth of Kelvin Connect, a digital and mobile applications business, which, as part of Airwave, had enabled the mobile digital transformation of the UK police service, amongst others. A qualified accountant, Nigel’s experience at Kelvin Connect has significant and compelling parallels with Aareon. This, and his cultural fit to our client, resulted in his successful appointment.

Daniel Osmer, Spectrum’s Managing Partner said: “This proved to be a very challenging search, and we are delighted that it ultimately successfully completed with the appointment of Nigel Rees. Aareon, quite rightly, had a list of tough selection criteria to meet in order to appoint an executive from an outside industry that would add significant fresh value to the business, and fit culturally. We really appreciated the support and commitment of our client throughout the process”.

Link to a further Aareon Case Study: Executive Assessments