Background
Flow Automate is a successful document management and business automation company backed by Rigby Technology Investments, part of the family-owned Rigby Group.
Introduced to Flow through Steve Rigby, CEO of Rigby Technology Investments, Iperium worked alongside Portfolio Director and Chairman John Taylor as the business prepared for its next phase of growth.
With AI and automation rapidly reshaping the document management market, the opportunity was to build on Flow’s successful foundations while evolving its proposition, accelerating the adoption of AI and automation solutions and ultimately increasing enterprise value ahead of a future exit.
Flow needed to evolve its leadership structure without losing the knowledge and experience that had made the business successful.
The founding Managing Director would transition towards a COO role, creating the requirement for a new Co-Managing Director who could work alongside the existing leadership team before ultimately transitioning into the CEO position.
The brief was highly specific: find an entrepreneurial leader with deep automation-sector experience, proven commercial and operational leadership, experience within an investor-backed environment and, ideally, first-hand experience of building and successfully exiting a business.
Just as importantly, they needed the forward-thinking mindset to understand how AI and automation could transform Flow’s proposition and create its next phase of value.
Iperium mapped leaders across the automation, intelligent process transformation and adjacent technology markets against the specific requirements of the investment and succession strategy.
Rather than produce a broad shortlist, we focused on precision.
Three highly targeted executives were presented, each bringing specific experience relevant to Flow’s next phase.
Cameron Turner was the standout fit.
As Chief Business Officer, Northern Europe at Roboyo, Cameron had full P&L ownership across sales and delivery, scaling revenue from £8.5m to £16.1m in two years while increasing EBITDA from 15% to 29%.
Previously, he had founded and built Lean Consulting over 15 years before successfully exiting the business to Roboyo.
His experience across automation, Intelligent Document Processing, Agentic AI and process transformation provided direct alignment with where Flow wanted to take the business.
Within 23 business days of presenting the three-person shortlist, Cameron had been offered and accepted the role.
Flow secured a leader with direct automation-sector expertise, entrepreneurial experience, P&L ownership, proven growth credentials and first-hand experience of successfully building and exiting a business.
His appointment creates a clear succession path from Co-MD to CEO while retaining the founding MD’s knowledge within the leadership team as the business transitions towards its next phase.
Most importantly, Flow now has leadership specifically aligned to the investment thesis: accelerating growth, embracing AI and automation and building enterprise value towards a successful future exit.
Why it worked
This wasn’t about searching for somebody with the right job title. It was about understanding the investment thesis and identifying the experience required to deliver it.
By combining our knowledge of the automation technology ecosystem with a highly specific competency-led search, we were able to narrow a complex brief to three highly relevant executives.
Cameron’s suitability was further validated by the market, with three independent sources referring him to Iperium during the search.
Three candidates. One standout appointment. 23 business days.
Understanding the value-creation plan first meant we could identify the leader capable of delivering it.