Based in new purpose-built premises in rural North Yorkshire, Aquarius are specialist providers of road-rail plant to the rail industry. Here Managing Director, James Platt tells how Aquarius benefited from services at RedSky

‘Tool box and taxi service’

Aquarius was primarily a ‘tool box and taxi’ sort of service for rail track maintenance, but now we’ve gone into a more specialist form of inspection, so it’s more like a taxi that carries an inspector round! More recently, we’ve also started to carry out data collection – the vehicles can collect data very quickly and efficiently as they go along the track.

The business starting ‘romping away’

In 2004, Aquarius was on a rapid expansion path – it was romping away - and I felt I just couldn’t look after it properly, particularly on the financial side. I’d considered other forms of business advice, but my perception was that you either got the flashy consultancy companies that dealt with the big corporates, or you got the ones helping small corner shops and sole traders – and there was nothing in between. I didn’t believe that either could offer me the close ‘shepherding’ I felt I needed, and I was concerned that we might only have an advisor for 6 months and then they move on.

RedSky keep us on track

With RedSky, we have the consistency and the closeness we need. I approached Peter initially - I had known a bit about Peter’s background previously. I knew I could run the business day-to-day, but I wanted somebody to interpret and keep a close eye on all of the accounts and the finance side of the business, help us make decisions about pricing and so on.

We see Peter every couple of weeks. We can be up to our neck with day-to-day problems and it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. He comes in and can immediately assess the situation. He really knows our business and keeps us on track. And he’s never ‘wishy-washy’; he’s quite straight to the point. He’ll say, ‘You should have done this 2 weeks ago – why haven’t you done it?’ And he’s helped to improve our efficiency – with issues like late payers. He’s not emotionally involved like we are; he has access to the correct documents and procedures and he brings an objectivity to the situation that is invaluable to us. We have exceeded our goals with RedSky’s help - I’m 100% sure that we wouldn’t be where we are today without that tight control and certainly not as profitable.

RedSky constantly goes the extra mile

I would say that Peter is efficient, knowledgeable and thorough – and he has enthusiasm which always helps! He has a broad scope of knowledge, which comes from having been involved in giving advice to many different businesses. He also has useful contacts with experts in other areas, which saves us so much time. Our business so far has just been in the UK, but with Peter’s ability to source assistance and government funding for us we’re hoping to branch out into Europe.  He’s also helped with our website and marketing, for example suggesting we have a précis of the company translated on the website for the overseas market. He knows these sorts of jobs get pushed to the back when you’re working in the company every day. He constantly goes the extra mile – he’s always on the lookout for grants and so on for us. We don’t ask him but he does this on our behalf – he’s very proactive.