Published: Aug 07, 2015
Focus:
Growth Capital
The Greater Manchester Loan Fund (GMLF) has made a £500,000 investment in Rekoop, a specialist provider of time capture software used by law firms in over 40 countries.
Established in 2010, Rekoop provides cloud-based software solutions for clients within the legal sector; offering a range of automated systems for enabling work to be monitored and tracked within legal firms. This ensures that these organisations are able to access accurate data on fee earning and related performance activity.
This investment will help Rekoop further accelerate its growth in the UK and support the business with its strategic expansion into Europe. The GMLF funding will also enable Rekoop to market the software to the wider professional services market, where the advanced features of the software will facilitate organisations’ ability to improve profit performance, efficiency and competitiveness.
Rekoop’s innovative software ensures fee earners can record time accurately across a multitude of tasks. It tracks time spent drafting documents, writing and reading emails, receiving and making calls and, additionally, its mobile GPS solution can also track time spent in meetings or travelling to and from meetings. Historically, firms have been reliant on fee earners manually completing timesheets. Invariably activity is input retrospectively, resulting in information being less accurate with fee income opportunities missed, write-downs, and discounts being applied.
The software provides organisations with an in-depth knowledge base of its resource and how it is utilised, leading to improvement and efficiencies in both recovery and billing. Rekoop’s products are now utilised by some of the UK’s leading law firms, including DLA Piper, Simmonds & Simmonds, Harper MacLeod and Gateley Plc.
David Wright, Investment Manager at Maven, said: “In a little over four years Rekoop has established itself as a market leader in the provision of time capture solutions. With exciting new products in development, this flexible funding solution from the GMLF will enable Rekoop’s management team to accelerate their expansion plans and we look forward to working in partnership with Benn and the team helping Rekoop to exploit its great potential”.
Benn Latham, CFO at Rekoop, added: “We are pleased to have secured this additional flexible funding package to accelerate our growth and believe that in Maven we have found a partner who is as excited about the future as we are! The funding effect is threefold. It will allow us to enhance our geographical offering, enable us to add value to clients operating outside of the legal sector and ensure that we continue to provide clients with the best of breed software and service in the market.”
Mike Blackburn, chair of Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership, said “As the city region continues with an unprecedented degree of widespread development, it’s important that growing businesses get the support they need to build on their success. Rekoop has shown itself to be an industry leader, and now with GMLF support we anticipate that the company will grow to be an ever greater asset for the legal sector both within Greater Manchester and beyond.”
Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: "This is another example of how Greater Manchester is supporting its expanding businesses by providing loan finance. Manchester has strong digital and legal sectors so it's good to see a success story which combines the two."
