Neil Kedward, owner and MD of the Seren Collection and Routescape Limited
Neil Kedward, owner and MD of the Seren Collection and Routescape Limited, talks about working with Mark Campbell-Blake and Greddf.
When former management consultant, Neil Kedward, decided to leave London and return home to Wales, a chance discovery of a derelict house meant that his ambition to build a small self-catering business quickly snowballed.
The Grove Hotel in Narberth was transformed – from just five bedrooms and a restaurant – to 25 luxurious bedrooms and one of only four 5-star hotels in Wales.
In 2014, the business grew with the addition of the Coast Restaurant in Saundersfoot and then, in 2016, the Beach House on the Gower Peninsular was opened.
In 2018, Neil launched Routescape, a tailor-made travel company.
“importance of surrounding myself with highly effective people”
“It’s been a great journey so far, and we have very much enjoyed building a thriving hospitality business” said Neil. “Having worked closely with so many industry leaders and CEOs, I understand the importance of surrounding myself with highly effective people.”
The Seren Collection, as it was now known, needed the strategic skills of a Senior Finance professional and so in 2017, Mark Campbell-Blake came on board as our Head of Finance.
Neil explained: “Mark not only managed the day to day finance operations but also introduced financial controls and procedures while integrating our financial data to produce management information that enables our management teams in each venue to can make sense of what is happening on a daily basis.
“understand where we can make improvements to our bottom line”
“As a result, our business is more agile and we are able to benchmark by area across each of the businesses, to understand where we can make improvements to our bottom line.
“Mark has been able to provide us with the financial analysis that we need to run a highly successful hospitality operation.
“fact-based decisions which support our overall profitability”
“Our ability to use live data, has empowered our management teams to make fact-based decisions which support our overall profitability.”
In November 2019 Mark left the Seren Collection and founded Greddf Limited. As a result Greddf now provides the Seren Collection with its Finance Direction service, which amongst the other benefits of the service, ensures the Seren Collection’s management information and financial controls are maintained to the same high standards.
Recently, the hospitality industry has suffered as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and resulting tourism lockdown but Neil and the team at Seren were well prepared to make the necessary adjustments.
“Greddf were able to assist … through their Business Disruption Recovery service”
“Because our financials, management accounts and management information were fully up to date and we had all the necessary data to hand, and Greddf were able to assist us, through their Business Disruption Recovery service, with making our Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme application within seven days of the Government loan scheme being launched,” Neil explained.
“good data management and financial controls can be the difference between failure and success”
“Whilst many businesses were struggling to put together the necessary documentation, with Greddf’s support our application had already been submitted and the money was in our bank account just one week later.” “It’s only when a business goes through testing times and unexpected upheaval that you really understand why good data management and financial controls can be the difference between failure and success.”
