Nicola Thomas and Vikki Macleod join Grant Thornton Scotland
Grant Thornton has appointed two new experts to its Growth 365 team in Scotland. Nicola Thomas and Vikki Macleod join the team of entrepreneurs as it looks to help clients scale their firms amid periods of growth.
Understanding what growth is right for a business and managing change while a company expands are two common challenges for businesses looking to grow proportionally. In a market suddenly bursting with a glut of rapidly expanding start-ups, then, scaling a company sustainably has become a vitally important issue for many new clients of the consulting industry.
Tapping into this demand, Grant Thornton’s Growth 365 team consists of a group of entrepreneurs, innovators and experienced CEOs who have grown mid-market businesses. It aims to support ambitious business leaders and their leadership teams by addressing their biggest challenges, so firms can focus on running a successful business. The service is offered nationally, and has received healthy interest since being rolled out across Grant Thornton’s Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen offices in 2018.
Businesses accessing the service benefit from access to bespoke insights, trend analysis and connection to an international network of fellow CEOs and entrepreneurs. Scottish companies currently signed up include specialist wine distributor, Alliance Wine; funeral plan provider Golden Charter; and innovative digital display experts, Pufferfish. In order to better support clients in Scotland amid this positive response to its new service, Grant Thornton has expanded its Growth 365 offering with the appointment of two senior industry experts.
According to a release from Grant Thornton, the firm hopes that adding sector specialist expertise and connections with the appointments of Nicola Thomas and Vikki Macleod will strengthen Growth 365 in the food and beverage, digital and e-commerce fields respectively. Neil McInnes, Partner at Grant Thornton, called these industries key for both Scotland and the UK in general, noting that “ambitious entrepreneurs and owner-managers leading dynamic businesses operating within them can now depend on a deepened knowledge-base and expanded international network to support their growth plans.”
Nicola Thomas is a food and drink industry expert who joins with 20 years’ experience of advising and mentoring management teams; helping them to fast track their international growth and tackle the pain points they face when expanding overseas. She is a Director of the UK Food & Drink Exporters Association and was recognised as one of the UK’s top 5 SME Export business advisers by Enterprise Nation in 2018. Her previous roles have included a spell as Head of Food and Drink for Santander UK, and European Marketing Director of Christian Salvesen food and consumer division.
Thomas said of her new role, “The food and beverage sector has always been a real strength for Scotland with many of its exports in demand across the globe. Despite the current climate of uncertainty, there are still substantial international growth opportunities for forward-thinking mid-market businesses. The Growth 365 service provides a great platform to unlock them and I’m incredibly pleased to join the team.”
Vikki Macleod meanwhile brings considerable experience in the technology, marketing and financial services sectors to Growth 365. During a 30-year career, Macleod has advised the C-suite of globally-operating listed blue chips including Virgin Money, Tesco and HSBC on their digital transformation and customer engagement strategies. Currently a Non-Executive Director with security video specialist IndigoVision, Macleod was previously on the board of Zonal Retail Data Systems – a market leader in electronic point-of-sale technology in the hospitality sector.
Speaking on joining Growth 365, Macleod remarked, “Grant Thornton rightly has a reputation as the go-to firm for growth for mid-market businesses and the G365 offering is a perfect fit for the innovators leading technology scaleups that I’ve advised for most of my career. I look forward to working with GT’s existing client base – and to taking the service to a new raft of leaders across Scotland.”
