Iplicit has announced the appointment of a new Chief Operating Officer, Olivia McMillan. McMillan joined shortly after iplicit announced its first funding round led by an institutional investor, One Peak. McMillan will be responsible for building the organisation. As it targets the mid-market in the UK and aims to supplant Sage as the dominant player. It has already achieved six years of triple-digit growth. And is expecting, with the help of additional funding, to achieve a seventh year of similar growth.
Iplicit is still focussing on the UK market, having seen significant momentum. To the extent that it has delayed its launch in the US by at least another year. This is according to Lyndon Stickley in a recent interview with Enterprise Times. He believes there is a huge opportunity in the legacy customer base of Sage and others. He commented, “We estimate about 75,000 need to do something, and they need to do something beyond Xero and QuickBooks, and not at the NetSuite or Dynamics, disruption and cost level.”
McMillan replaces Edward Gairdner, who has been COO since June 2022 and was appointed Chief of Staff and Company Secretary in January this year. Gairdner will focus on the corporate, legal, governance and people aspects of the organisation’s rapid expansion in the future.
iplicit’s CEO, Lyndon Stickley, said, “I am really pleased to have secured Olivia onto the Leadership Team at iplicit. Her experience in transforming fast-growth organisations to enable true scale to be achieved is something that is very valuable to us at this stage of our journey. Our sights are now firmly set becoming the most popular accounting software in the UK midmarket; we intend to grow relentlessly for the next decade or more.
“Olivia also represents the final appointment in our C-Suite, to enable our aspirations to be achieved; we have an exceptionally strong team striving for, and delivering, exceptional results.
“There must have come a time when Netflix recognised that it wasn’t just a market disruptor and a hopeful underdog; a turning point where it could see that the entire sector was available to it. At iplicit, we are now structured to redefine the entire accounting software sector.”
Who is Olivia McMillan
McMillan joins from Toronto-based legal technology provider Dye & Durham, where she was Vice President of operations (UK & Canada). She also spent two months as a strategy consultant at MoveGenius. There, she led the examination of MoveGenius’s customer journey and service operations. Resulting in the successful implementation of the Zendesk platform.
Prior to that, she was Director of Service and Delivery and headed customer success at Houseful. Houseful is the property tech, CRM and data company behind the Zoopla brand. All three roles were based in London.
An Australian, she started her career at realestate.com.au, one of the largest proptech brands in that market. She also held roles at Zendesk, optimising operations in the APAC region, REA Group and Impact Data.
She has deep experience in helping organisations scale their businesses. The challenges at iplicit are significant, and one of her experiences should suit her. iplicit is experiencing tremendous growth. As its employee numbers grow, she will be responsible for putting in place the right organisational structure and processes to support and maintain that growth. With the iplicit plans for international expansion, her experience in working internationally will also be brought to bear in the future.
McMillan commented, “We recognise that as we double in size this year, we need to continue delighting our customers and exceeding their expectations as we grow. That’s what I’m here to ensure.”
“I’m very excited about iplicit. It has the ‘secret sauce’ that consists of an incredible product, great people and perfect timing in a market that is unserved and massive. It’s like we’ve rolled six sixes in a row. And we now aim to capitalise on our luck and obtain a material share of this £2bn ARR opportunity.”
“I’ve been aware of iplicit for quite some time and have watched its story unfold, especially over the past year. I’ve been looking for an organisation where I could be exceptionally proud of the product I advocate for. When I started reading about iplicit and its customer testimonials, I realised I had found that next exceptional piece of software. And the next great organisation I could contribute to.”
