Valueworks acquired by Inprova Group

Inprova Group acquired Valueworks in July 2017 from HgCapital, which exited in full after five years. HgCapital had bought the business in October 2012 through its Mercury fund, in that vehicle’s first investment. Valueworks operates a private marketplace through which around 300 buyers, mostly social housing organisations, order the goods and services they need for planned repairs and maintenance. Housing associations and councils maintaining large stocks of rented homes buy constantly: taps, boilers, doors, paint, and the labour to fit them. The platform lets them specify what they need in detail, places the order with the supplier at the price agreed under their framework contract, records what was bought against which job, tracks what their contractors are actually doing and calculates the rebates due on volume. That record is what buyers lack when repairs are ordered by telephone: spend is visible only once invoices arrive, and contractor performance cannot be compared across programmes. Aggregating the demand of 300 organisations also gives them purchasing terms none could obtain alone. Inprova, based in Warrington, buys on behalf of its clients across a range of categories, and reaches the housing sector through its Procurement for Housing brand. Construction, capital works and maintenance are the largest areas of spend for many of them, and the categories where compliance obligations have grown heaviest. Valueworks gave it the system through which that spend could be channelled and recorded, alongside the sourcing and contract work it already carried out.

It is worth noting that the fund HG Capital took control of Valueworks through an LBO in 2012.