iplicit set for ‘pivotal’ year as triple-digit growth continues

iplicit says 2024 will be “pivotal” for the business after revenue and user numbers more than doubled in each of its first five years.

As well as growing by more than 100% annually, the company has won a string of awards and kept a near-perfect customer retention rate.

It crowned 2023 by taking the title of Growing Business of the Year (Up to £10m) at the Growing Business Awards in London. The win came shortly after it scooped the Fintech award and the Dorset Cluster prize at the Tech South West Awards.

iplicit starts 2024 as a finalist for MAT-Tech Company of the Year in the National MAT Awards as it continues its push into the school multi-academy trust sector.

Lyndon

iplicit CEO Lyndon Stickley said: “January 2024 marks five years since iplicit launched into the market, although the project to create the software started as far back as 2013.

“We ended 2023 with an unblemished performance of more than 100% growth each year since our launch and we’re expecting in excess of 100% growth in 2024 as well.”

iplicit was launched to address a huge gap in the finance software market. It caters for organisations that have outgrown entry-level cloud accounting packages or outdated on-premise systems – but do not want the expense or disruption that come with the larger ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems that are typically designed for organisations with 500+ staff.

“When we secured our first organisation as a customer in 2019, we had just a handful of users – but we start 2024 with over 1,100 organisations and close to 20,000 daily users on the platform, logging in from 85 countries,” said Stickley.

New partners in ‘dramatic pivot’

The company’s growth plans for 2024 involve scaling up its partnerships with re-sellers and accountancy practices.

“2024 is a pivotal year for iplicit as it ‘doubles down’ on its investment within channel partners to enable exponential growth during 2025 and beyond,” notes Lyndon Stickley.

“Historically, a large proportion of our deals have been direct, but we see a dramatic pivot in 2024. We have accredited numerous partners in Q4 of 2023 to enable us to expand in 2024 and grow exponentially in 2025 and beyond.

“We’ve also improved the channel model for onboarding third parties to sell, deploy, and service our proposition which will enable us to double and triple down on the UK opportunity while simultaneously facilitating international expansion through an equivalent partner base.

“That base now comprises the traditional ERP sales partner but also a rising number of managed service providers (MSPs) who have found themselves servicing hundreds of clients with no easy replacement for their on-premise legacy finance system.

“It also includes an increasing number of top 100 accountant partners – a channel that is particularly interesting to us as we consider this route to be strategic for growth both in our domestic market and abroad.

Expanding in education

iplicit sees education – specifically the growing number of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) – as a major area for growth in 2024. The ability to add more academies to a trust’s finance system in moments, at minimal extra cost, has proved a major draw as MATs expand.

“We launched successfully in education in 2023, securing numerous multi-academy trusts within the first nine months, and have built a very strong team to pioneer our disruption in the education market,” says Stickley.

“Whereas PS Financials represented a lifeline for education users 15 years ago, iplicit is doing the same with a true cloud proposition, helping users of on-premise and privately hosted systems that are struggling to add more schools cost-effectively. We’ve also had incredible feedback from education users about the helpfulness of our UK-based support and implementation teams.”

Improving the product

iplicit launched a host of improvements to its software in 2023, including a wealth of new automation features and greater integration with other applications, through its own API (application programming interface) and popular iPaaS (integrated platform as a service) tools such as Zapier.

“We’ve added a number of modules to the product that really strengthen it, including fixed asset features and automated accounts payable, saving users significant time on a daily, weekly and monthly basis,” said Lyndon.

“On the horizon for 2024 is further investment in API integration to further increase the ecosystem within which we work. We’re looking to work with ‘best of breed’ applications across a variety of propositions, from payroll to CRM (customer relationship management). In addition, we have a number of exciting new features within the product too, with five releases planned before the end of the year.”

Near-perfect retention rates

“Not only has our growth curve been flawless, but we have a near-perfect retention rate. We lost just one customer in 2023 – representing just 0.31% of revenue churn – and even that was due to a corporate change rather than dissatisfaction with the product,” says Lyndon Stickley.

“Our system has also become bigger, solving bigger problems.

“In 2019, our average system price was £6,000-£8,000 per year, whereas now it’s more commonly £15,000-£20,000 a year. That’s a reflection of the scale of the systems we’re now deploying, the number of users, the size of organisations, the number of legal entities they involve and the functionality they’re using. That said, we’re still a lifeline for the smaller organisations – it's just that we’re now appealing far more to those that may have consider Intacct or NetSuite but now consider our offer to be far more compelling on numerous fronts.”

Find out more

To find out more about iplicit, take a quick tour of the software or get in touch for more information.