HAS Technology Group case study – CTO placed in UK technology company

About:

Backed by Octopus Investments, HAS Technology is an innovative health and social care SaaS business that uses wearable technology to provide high-quality data collection and predictive analytics to their clients.

Requirement:

Headquartered in Birmingham, HAS required a SaaS technology leader who would be able to design and initiate the build of a new platform and product suite on a very short timeline. The new CTO would report to the CEO and lead a team of ~100, covering engineering, cyber, cloud and services. The ideal CTO needed to have a very broad range of technologies in their repertoire, as well as experience of restructuring, managing multi-location teams, and the capability to increase delivery tenfold.

 Solution:

La Fosse were mandated to run a search for the CTO, focusing on individuals that had exposure to fast-growth software businesses, specifically CTOs or VPs of Engineering with a strong understanding of SaaS, subscription-based models. With the position being located outside of the London and North-West tech areas, our team needed to take a more forensic approach, identifying a sufficient talent pool and finding CTOs who would relocate.

Result:

After a 6-week process, the CTO was selected from a shortlist of 5, with HAS being happy to hire either of the final 2 candidates. The successful candidate was a high-achieving McKinsey alumni who had since delivered several mission-critical SaaS solutions and worked with large volumes of sensitive payments data. They joined HAS within 5 weeks of the offer, in the midst of the UK lockdown. HAS have subsequently been bought by The Access Group, and this placement established a strong partnership between the CTO and CPO.

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