Conveyancing Month!

 

 

 The UK’s first monthly on-line journal dedicated to conveyancers!

 

Interview...

  CONTENTS

Following the acquisition of TM Property services by a consortium of investors, including the property portal Rightmove, TM’s founder and CEO, Steven Foster, announced his retirement. We arranged to interview him.

 

Across the road from TM’s Swindon offices is Dick Lovett’s Ferrari franchise. I’d arrived 30 minutes early for my meeting, so I pottered over to admire those gleaming icons of wealth, power and virility. “Can I help you sir?” enquired a lavishly besuited salesman. “No” I replied “just dreaming”.

 

Steven Foster, of course, doesn’t have to dream, and a brace of Ferraris could be his for the asking - except, of course, he’s never going to ask. Perhaps the most impressive things about Steven (and I could say the same for his successor, John Carolan, who sat in on the interview) was his complete lack of desire - or need - to impress.

 

The coffee comes in plastic cups (see what I mean?) and we get under way.

 

Steven, how did TM begin? Well, the project began to gather steam in ‘98, ‘99, so it was child of the .com era really. At the time I was working at KPMG, who were involved with Intergraph, a digital mapping company, who were able to provide the technology. The initial idea was to build the NLIS hub on a spec basis, and just deliver it to market. Ultimately, the government chose to go the tender and procurement route.

 

And MDA got the job. Correct. However, the creation of the NLIS hub (and whether by us or someone else), Land Registry’s e-conveyancing roll out and, of course, the whole issue of HIPS, meant there was massive potential in the project, so with some help from KPMG and Intergraph, we pressed on.

 

What about the funding? Initially, most of that came from a group of venture capitalists - business angels - associated with LBS (London business School). And then of course, in 2001, Countrywide took a big stake.

 

Initially, your service offering was very much skewed towards being a HIPs provider, wasn’t it? Yes, and that was inevitable. The potential impact of the proposed legislation always meant that it would be the major business driver.

 

So when the HIPs proposals were shelved following the 2001 general election, you must have felt challenged? Yes -  “Challenged” would be about right! Basically, we sat down, thought it through, and realised we had to develop our core offering, which was to provide online search ordering. Essentially, we re-focused on our NLIS channel business.

 

Was that hard? Not in terms of business organisation, no. But it was very hard technically. The problem was that everyone at that time was connecting to the service via a 56k modem, and it was just too slow, so that was very difficult. And in addition, local authorities just weren’t engaging. However, the roll out of broadband has meant that there is now plenty of bandwidth to go around, and with the passage of time, local authorities are beginning to get their house in order, so that problem has eased too, and things are moving very quickly now.

 

So where is TM today? Technically, we have a very good product, and we're entirely confident in our service proposition. We’ve taken TM from what was essentially an e-commerce web site to being a full blown ASP (application service provider). In particular, we've given our customers the ability to create their own templates and bespoke screens, and provided an administrator function as well. This means that end users can configure how they access and experience the service, they don’t simply have to accept what we give them.

 

So end users can create there own bespoke user interfaces and search packages? Precisely. Rather than try and second guess what customers want, we’ve given them the ability to create an information mix that exactly fits their needs.

 

Will you be offering your own HIPs package? No, if only because Rightmove are now a substantial shareholder in TM, and are going to be a very significant HIPs solution provider themselves. But we will offer other peoples HIPs packages, and we’ll certainly be offering the individual elements that go into HIPs, to anyone who wants to make one up.   

 

So that makes you sort of “HIPs proof” doesn’t it? I think “HIPs proof” is the wrong phrase; HIPs neutral would be a lot more apt. If HIPs come on stream next year as Scheduled, then that’s great. But if they don’t, then it wouldn’t impact on our core business.

 

And do you think HIPs will come on stream next year? Or ever? Do you think they’ll actually happen? (Steven pauses at this, and smiles, and I begin to wonder if this particular trout is going to rise to the fly. He does.) “I reckon it’s about 50/50. It’s a bit like a train, and whether it’s gone too far down the track to call it back. To be honest, I’m not sure it’s reached the point of no return just yet. The Conservatives, under David Cameron, have given the anti HIPs lobby a more coherent voice, and that might slow progress. Ultimately, I think it will turn on the Industry’s readiness to implement HIPs by June of next year, and the state of the economy in general, and the property market in particular, at that time. If the property market is buoyant, then all things being equal, I would expect a fairly vigorous implementation of HIPs. However, against a background of a weakening property market, and the perception that introducing HIPs would create further disruption, I can certainly envisage HIPs being delayed, or being made voluntary, or - possibly - being allowed to fizzle out altogether.

 

And what are your plans for the future? Right now I’m focusing on the hand over to my successor, John Carolan, making sure we have a smooth transition. After that, I really have no firm plans at the moment, and I’m not sure whether I’ll remain based in IT and professional services. What really appeals to me is changing the way people work, so if an interesting challenge comes my way along those lines - who knows?

        

This is the way you do IT!

The man who took TM from a concept to a multi million pound turnover company with a national profile, is looking for a new challenge.