Gareth Linley began his first week as Brightmere Energy's Chief Executive with an established business to run and a founder's reputation to follow. He took over on 2 September, after Ruth Cavanagh stepped down at the end of August. She remains a shareholder in the company she co-founded with Tom Easby in 2011.
Linley previously served as chief operating officer at a communications provider. At Brightmere, he inherits a household supplier that reported around 760,000 homes at its March year end. Revenue for FY2018/19 was £1.02 billion and EBITDA was £31 million, according to the results announced in July.
Those figures describe a different scale of business from the Bristol venture that began supplying its first customers in February 2012. The Filton contact centre has been joined by a Swansea operation, opened in 2016, and Field Services was created at Avonmouth last year to bring smart meter installation in-house.
Cavanagh's influence remains visible in four values adopted in 2014: Be clear, Be fair, Be warm and Sort it. They appear in the way Brightmere presents both customer service and employment. For a successor, they provide familiar language, but also a standard customers and long-serving colleagues can use when judging a change.
In comments accompanying the transition, Cavanagh described the business as ready for another stage of development. 'The people who built Brightmere did more than establish systems,' she said. 'They made it a place where somebody was expected to take an interest in the customer's problem. I want that to continue as the company grows.'
Linley said he intended to understand the existing operation before setting out his priorities. 'I bring experience of running a large service business, but that does not mean arriving with an answer to every question,' he said. 'There are colleagues here who know why a particular process works and where it gets in their way.'
He identified the relationship between digital service and adviser support as an area of interest. Customers should be able to complete straightforward tasks conveniently, he said, while obtaining a person when an account needed explanation or investigation. He did not announce a new technology programme as part of the handover.
The change also brings a new relationship between the founder and the day-to-day leadership. Cavanagh retains a financial connection to Brightmere, but operating decisions will now be led by Linley. The company said the succession had been planned to support continuity for customers and colleagues.
Asked what would tell him the transition was working, Linley returned to ordinary service rather than the published results. He wanted to hear how a question travelled through the company and where it stopped moving. 'A customer does not see the structure chart,' he said. 'They know whether the last person they spoke to helped them get somewhere.'