CY sponsor seminar with IDS Group: Why SME growth stalls (and how to fix it)

Date: Thursday 1st October

Time: 09:00 for 09:30 till 11:00

Why SME growth stalls (and how to fix it) - Aligning Technology, People & Strategy for Scalable Growth

Venue: HSBC, 33 Park Row, Leeds, LS1 1LD

Panel: Mark Summerson COO, Advisor & Angel Investor & Connect Yorkshire EIR will chair Nick Halliday, CEO of IDS Group and Patrick Maloney, MD of Lead Talent

Most ambitious SMEs don’t fail. They stall.

Not because of effort.

Not because of ambition.

But because strategy, people, and technology are pulling in different directions.

This session is designed to fix that.

It’s rarely due to a lack of effort or market opportunity. It happens because as a business scales, its technology stack silently begins fighting against its people and its commercial strategy.

Software is layered on top to fix isolated problems, creating a chaotic web of systems. Meanwhile, your people operate in organizational silos, and your overarching strategy gets lost in technical complexity. Instead of driving the business forward, your infrastructure becomes your biggest bottleneck. Growth plateaus, operational friction spikes, and momentum evaporates.

On Thursday 1st October, join Nick Halliday and Patrick Maloney for an exclusive, unfiltered briefing on how to break through this ceiling by transforming your technology, people, and systems into a single, high-velocity growth engine.

Who will benefit from this session?

To maintain a high-value peer environment, this session is strictly curated for:

Founders, CEOs, MDs, and CTOs leading established Yorkshire businesses.

Companies actively scaling £1M+ turnover.

Leaders currently experiencing a growth plateau, technology architecture that feels unmanageable, or operational friction between their teams and their systems.

Note: If you are looking for generic start-up advice or a passive sales pitch, this room is not for you. This is an interactive session for established leaders demanding practical clarity.

When a mid-market business hits a growth plateau, it is rarely due to a single isolated failure. It happens because the friction between your systems, your people, and your ultimate direction has quietly compromised your foundations.

True sustainable growth requires moving past fragmented, ad-hoc fixes and focusing on four interconnected pillars of modern enterprise scale:

The Power of the foundation

You cannot scale speed on top of structural instability. Rapid execution without an engineered, resilient backend is simply a fast track to operational failure. True velocity requires a robust, cloud-native technical foundation, one that rejects the noise of "AI-washing" and disjointed tools. By building integrated, human-first infrastructure, you streamline workflows, erase bottlenecks, and give your teams the visibility they need to operate at pace.

Rigorous planning

Most scaling SMEs aren’t suffering from a lack of action; they are suffering from a lack of alignment. When commercial strategy isn't explicitly mapped to your operational and technical capabilities, a dangerous gap opens up between leadership's vision and the team's daily reality. Strategic planning means aligning your ultimate business direction with your technical roadmap, turning chaotic "busywork" into deliberate, predictable scaling momentum.

Complete team and system alignment

The ultimate driver of performance is alignment. Forcing talented, loyal teams to fight inadequate software or broken legacy processes destroys execution. True accountability happens when your leadership structure, your people, and your underlying platforms operate as a unified system. When your technology naturally enables your people to deliver the core strategy, you eliminate operational noise and unlock permanent competitive advantage.

Meet your panel

The Chair: Mark Summerson COO, Advisor & Angel Investor & Connect Yorkshire EIR

Nick Halliday , CEO of IDS Group.

A serial tech entrepreneur with 25+ years’ experience scaling digital platforms and SaaS ventures worldwide. From advising FTSE 500 brands to raising private equity and founding IDS Group, now a £5m-turnover software and cloud authority - Nick’s strength lies in bridging commercial ambition with secure, scalable technology strategy. Having helped launch eight successful SaaS platforms, he brings deep, real-world expertise in building the technical foundations that allow ambitious SMEs to scale safely.

Patrick Maloney, MD of Lead Talent.

Bringing 40 years of experience in the recruitment and talent sector, Patrick had previously helped lead one of the UK’s largest staffing businesses before founding Lead Talent in 2012. Since then, Patrick and his team have worked with over 70 businesses and more than 100 leaders, helping them unlock growth, strengthen leadership teams and deliver over £250 million in additional profit.

What you’ll walk away with

This is a zero-slide, zero-fluff interactive discussion. You wi

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