This is a republished interview between i-FM and Bellrock CEO, Carlo Alloni, with thanks and credit to i-FM.
Carlo Alloni hit the ground running after being named CEO at Bellrock in August, with plans as big as his enthusiasm for the job.
“I am very excited,” Alloni says. “I think the business has a very good opportunity to disrupt the market. I think that we have the assets we need, and in my first three months we have already launched a number of important initiatives.”
He already has a three-year forward view for the business. “I am seeing 2025 as transformation, then 2026 as growth and 2027 as acceleration,” Alloni explains. Laying the groundwork for that involves defining the pillars that underpin the strategy.
“Obviously,” he continues, “we want to have the best talent, working, winning and having fun. We want to be technology-led in everything that we do, both internally and customer-facing. And, thirdly, I believe there is a real deficiency in the market around intelligent insights – people are starting to collect data but there is still often no real insight coming from that, little that adds real value. So, the third pillar is about intelligent insights, which requires some investment in data collection, in systems etc. Then the fourth pillar is about sustainability.
“Building on these four pillars, we believe that we are uniquely positioned to disrupt the market.”
And that’s not all that’s been on his agenda since arriving. “We’ve just defined a new customer value proposition – covering basically what we are going to solve, why and how for our clients. We’ve also just defined a new vision, mission and values statement for our team members. And we are finalising the three-year strategy. So, there is a lot going on already,” he says with more than a little understatement.
Positioning Bellrock in the market
Given that the company is difficult to label within the FM landscape – with its seemingly separate service steams of workplace, technology, hard FM and property consultancy – this focus on the business basics sounds like the right move. “I think at the moment there is some confusion in the marketplace about us,” Alloni concedes. “But the three things that I really wanted to do, and we are doing, is to define clear, crisp customer value propositions. After those are embedded, we need to have a revamp on the brand, the website and go-to-market materials. And that then feeds back into the three-year plan strategy, shaping how we build the company we need.”
Fleshing out his thinking, he adds: “At the moment, we have four clear go-to-markets: critical engineering, with M&E and fire services which we self-deliver; workspace services, including a strong proposition for energy saving and data-led insights for decision-making; technology, which hosts Concerto, the data collection specialist Mobiess and others; and property services consulting.
“Unfortunately, at the moment, these are a bit like different companies, but we are working on integrating them into one coherent consulting company. So, needs at the moment include sharpening and clarifying our proposition to our clients and the broader audience.”
Alloni sees Concerto as a great strength sitting at the centre of the Bellrock business – “a fantastic CAFM system,” he says, “and we continue to invest in it to ensure we have, and maintain, a best-in-breed product. We have the opportunity to use Concerto as the introduction to our other service lines. Or it could be that consultants doing asset surveys or similar on-site work feed back information into workplace services or critical engineering. I do see a lot of opportunities for cross-overs and touchpoints that would allow us to leverage our extended resources for clients quite quickly.”
Don’t mention FM
Nowhere in the discussion of service streams are the words ‘facilities management’. “I have banned the term inside the company,” Alloni declares. “I think that unfortunately FM is struggling to innovate. I think we too often see a constant race to the bottom. FM is not recognised for technology innovation. It’s not recognised for intelligence. Not recognised for excellence. I don’t want to be talking about old ideas. I’m for transparency, for pro-activeness, for excellence, insights, technology innovation. And all of that unfortunately is too often not in FM.”
Alloni sees facilities management as too often driven by profit & loss figures, rather than the customer experience. “And that is why there are problems,” he believes. “It’s an industry in which often everybody seems to be unhappy – the people on the frontline because they are on low wages, the management teams because they must work with limited resources, the client who worries about service quality and cost. There’s a lot of negative energy. We need something different. But what brought us here will not drive us forward. We need a completely different way of approaching this – and that is what I want to do at Bellrock.”
Consequently, he has a different plan: “My vision is that we will be the Amazon of FM – we’re going to innovate; we’re going to disrupt; we’re going to be bringing marketplaces and customers together with a very slick technology offer. By doing that we’ll be promoting transparency, equality, pro-activeness, a different way of delivering services for properties.”
That seems a bolds ambition, but Alloni is both determined and realistic: “The proof is in the pudding, of course,” he admits. “But I have a very clear vision that I want to bring to reality. And if we look around to see who is disrupting established ways of doing things, they are not really in FM. I am determined to have technologists, data scientists, customer experience specialists – people who have a focus on technology-driven, customer-focused journeys – these are the people we want to help us disrupt this market. We need to think differently and ensure we have the right teams to deliver on that. That will come from both training and development for people we have and from recruiting from a wider base than the traditional FM approach.
“I’m very passionate about this,” he says – and there is no doubting that, as he talks about his first months at the company.
A different starting point
Carlo Alloni got into FM thanks to Mitie’s Phil Bentley – “the best CEO I ever met”. Bentley was his boss at Cable & Wireless before that business was sold on. The boss joined Mitie while Alloni stayed with C&W’s new owner. But a couple of years later when Bentley asked him to come and run Mitie’s Technical Services division, “I couldn’t say no”, and they worked together again for four and a half years. Then, following a break to deal with some personal problems and later some work on short-term projects, Alloni was approached to join Bellrock.
“I liked the company,” he says, “and I liked our investment partner. It’s a great team and a business with great potential. All the planets aligned and so we started the journey.”
What was it like moving from Mitie, the biggest FM service provider by far, to the considerably smaller Bellrock? “The two are very different: we are in different market segments, with different customer propositions,” Alloni says, adding: “We don’t compete. If a client calls and says I want you to self-deliver all of our services, I would say ‘no – we specialise in self-delivered hard services, we have a very efficient supply chain that can meet all your other needs, we have the IT platform to give you all the insights you need – but if you want an IFM provider that self-delivers it all, that’s not us’.”
Bellrock is not looking to be in the business of self-delivery across multiple FM services – another reason for banning the term inside the organisation. But it would certainly consider the role of integrator, assembling and managing the suppliers that best meet the customer’s needs. “We can do that because we have the technology ‘brains’ to do it thoroughly, efficiently and creatively,” Alloni says.
Then he returns to his aspiration for the company: “What I want is to create a whole new experience in the market that is based on transparency, insight, experience – that is my mission. I want us to be positioned as the intelligent partner acting with our clients. How can we do that? Concerto, number 1. Second, multi-disciplinary property consulting. Third, a very transparent and agnostic offer. I believe we have the best supply chain and most efficient integrator or managing agent proposition in the market.”
Warming to the theme of change, he adds: “I feel that clients are becoming tired of the traditional FM contracting model. I think they are increasingly open to saying ‘give me information, give me intelligence, give me insights – don’t just deliver the services and manage your spend’. There are other solutions to this. For example, a model that sets payment linked to NPS scores – or something else that is really new and different. The taxi industry was solidly established – until Uber appeared. The television industry till Netflix appeared. Why not think differently?”
Changing the market landscape
So, as a Mitie veteran Alloni is not new to this marketplace. But this is his first experience of working with a private equity investor. How is he finding it? “I’m loving it,” he declares. “I always previously worked in big PLCs, which are great places to learn and develop. But the PE experience has been very direct, very entrepreneurial, very transparent and very refreshing. They are value-creation driven, very open to reviewing strategy, very supportive of management. And because they have investments in many companies, there are opportunities to share learnings and intelligence across the group. We’re already talking with a couple of the other companies about issues and opportunities we have in common. It’s great!”
A typical PE strategy is buy & build, and certainly Bellrock has a significant track record of acquisitions. Will we see more of that? Yes, says Alloni straightaway: “I have a very aggressive M&A strategy. Primarily in three segments – technology, we want to keep complementing the Concerto offering; property consulting, we want to get bigger, better and more geographically spread; and critical engineering, again to complement our existing offer, perhaps with compliance services.”
He thinks the days of the big consolidation moves between traditional FM players are probably largely past, but we will continue to see buying of in-fills and bolt-ons. As for external investment, “I think the investment influx into the market is a trend that will carry through for at least five years. My personal opinion is that the reasons for that include the fact that investors, with their experience across industries, see that FM is in Neanderthal times when it comes to customer experience, innovation, value creation, and they say ‘we can really transform this asset’. Second, the level of people retiring from the FM industry, I believe, is higher than the level of new entrants, so there is a generation shift which is favourable to acquisitions. Third, the basics in FM are so broken that someone with experience in other businesses would say ‘even if I don’t innovate, even if I don’t disrupt, just by running this business well I can generate value’.
“Everything is so clunky in traditional FM – there are masses of efficiencies to be gained anchored on smarter use of data and technology,” he adds.
Summing up comes this way: “I think the market is crying out for disruption – and this is why I am so bullish about it. We are the right size with the right skills, and it is the right moment. I don’t want to be the biggest in the market. I just want to be the smartest.”
You certainly can’t fault Carlo Alloni for his enthusiasm. And on that basis alone, Bellrock will be worth watching over the coming years.
