What colleagues and clients say

I worked as a director of MHR with Lawrence over a 12 year period. During that period Lawrence came through the ranks on the technology side of the business and played a fundamental part in the creation of MHR’s next-generation HR and Payroll Solution, now the UK market leading solution known as iTrent. In recognition of his contribution to the realisation, creation and development of iTrent, Lawrence was soon promoted to Managing Director to drive and preside over the rapid expansion of MHR, and the further development of its product and service streams to become the award-winning flexible solution they are today.

During this time I reported directly to Lawrence. A key aspect to the successful growth was Lawrence’s knowledge and understanding of markets, underpinned by his natural drive and impressive appetite for research. There is no doubt that he played a pivotal role in MidlandHR’s success in the public and third sectors by personally educating and supporting the new business sales and business development teams in the detail and nuances of the OJEU framework. It wasn’t unusual for Lawrence to know more about an OJEU bid than the salesperson and bid team that were directly responsible.

Leading the business development teams from the front, Lawrence was instrumental in the growth of MHR in the Education sector, gaining prestigious customers along the way such as Cambridge and Oxford Universities, before expanding the product and service roadmap further into the College market. His knowledge of HR and Payroll requirements, and how products and services might meet the requirements of different market sectors and specific customer nuance, is not only comprehensive but impressive. Further-more his knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, emerging technologies enables him to craft a vision of future potential, to ensure solutions are robust, futureproof and deliver a high level of return on investment.

I worked as a client of Lawrence’s over a six year period in the capacity of HR and Payroll Programme Manager for Croydon Council. During that period Lawrence was MD of MHR and the executive sponsor of strategic public sector projects.

I enjoyed a close working relationship with Lawrence to ensure the London Borough of Croydon had both a successful implementation and become one of first local authorities to fully implement employee and manager self-service while embracing scorecard reporting in support of many corporate initiatives and latterly “Big Data”.

Throughout our time working together we won multiple awards, national acknowledgement of our innovative approach to systems and data management. Lawrence has a wide understanding of how procurement works in the public sector, he truly understands OJEU and the internal and decision processes by which Local Authorities work.

I have always found Lawrence’s judgement to be spot on and of value. In our time working together we jointly planned, in true partnership, flexible and workable solutions to the challenges we faced post-2007 and the squeeze on Local Authorities funding. When joint working was mandated across the London Boroughs in 2012 Lawrence remained close to and advised on elements of our approach to future procurements.

I have no doubt that Lawrence will add much value to any organisation who engages his services.

Lawrence worked with BGT on a consultative basis to aid and accelerate our penetration into Whitehall agencies and government think tanks. During that time his knowledge of the UK central government procurement rules prove invaluable in our aim of securing some major strategic government/public sector accounts. It was a pleasure working with Lawrence.

I’ve over 20 years experience in HR and Payroll, most of which has been spent project managing system implementations of major players within the HR/Payroll software arena including SAP, Peoplesoft/Oracle and MHR (Trent and iTrent).

During that time I always enjoyed working with Lawrence and his team which I did from 2004 onwards. He always ensured MHR worked at providing a deep understanding of the Education sector, beginning with the sales team during procurement and then the subsequent ongoing business development that led to the success of the projects that we worked on together.

Some examples include the embedding of an excellent HESA functionality within the iTrent product, facilitating a vibrant Education User group, introducing an HE Account Manager to further the evolving requirements of HE and continually demonstrating the value that the sector represented to him and his team.

Lawrence is a true industry expert and visionary in the HR marketplace. He took MHR to new heights in its evolution as a market leader under his role as Managing Director. His presence, experience and motivational capacity captures people’s attention and allows real business change to take place. He is a highly experienced senior executive with a real passion for business, a visionary with ideas for the long-term future and a pleasure to work with.

As a non-executive director to ABM, Lawrence always provided support and a motivational drive for change, especially his scrutiny of sales and their understanding of Blue Light procurement, that allowed me and my team to continue on our change programme and to expand the businesses in to new markets.

I had the pleasure to work with Lawrence in the capacity of Sales Director at MHR. He always led the team with passion and a winning style that embraced the sales function.

One thing he was instrumental in was bringing in outside procurement consultancy to aid the sales team in their understanding of public sector procurement. Together we implemented a bid review process that closely scrutinised the requirements and reviewed alternative models the prospect had at their disposal in terms of their form of tender.

This led to the building of a “Bid Team” to formally manage all tenders. The result being an increase in winning numerous tenders both public and commercial. This translated from a starting point of 1 in 6 to 1 in 2 within a 12month period.

He scrutinised the bids and was heavily involved in the negotiation of the commercials and contractual variations for hundreds of clients, always maintaining a “Win, Win” approach for both business and customer.

Having known Lawrence for some years and also of his experience in the HR Tech space I engaged with him to help OrangeHRM accelerate our product roadmap and direction. During this time Lawrence built strong relationships with our global team and many of our North American clients.

Lawrence brought a balanced view of market knowledge, sales techniques and how to transfer these into the broader demands of the product capabilities and technologies best applied to these.

I hope I can work with Lawrence again in some capacity in the future.