ERA: The Perfect Match

Following a successful 30+ year career developing and growing well known respected businesses in the UK and internationally, Stephen Tennant decided to take time out to consider what he truly wanted to be engaged with next.

He looked into utilising his broad commercial skills buying an established business and came close to buying one or two, but nothing seemed exactly right. Stephen comments, “friends and colleagues, kept telling me I should be running my own company, but buying into an established organisation didn’t feel right to me. I soon realised it wasn’t what I wanted.” 

He did identify that his preference was to get back into procurement as he knew from his own experience working on both sides, that most companies were not effectively managing their purchasing, having the time to understand the best market wide supply options, getting the best deals and expertly identifying those best aligned with their own business activities. He could see from there were many reasons why this was happening and so wanted to utilise his strong skills, experience and expertise that he has built up to genuinely help businesses, in a long term ethical manner.

Deciding to explore this further, he remembered coming across ERA earlier in his career and began to look into the company and the business model more closely. He quickly reached the conclusion that ERA presented the right values and ethics for him, together with the right professionalism to be a good match, and the timing was right.

Continuing his due diligence before making a commitment Stephen says, “I asked trusted friends, who know me well, to challenge my reasoning behind investing in ERA, and when they had finished it was clear that joining ERA was a decision that seemed a perfect natural fit for me.”

Stephen continues, “With ERA I have found the company is built on good, customer centric values which I can easily associate myself with. I am surrounded by like-minded professionals who have an immense depth of specialist knowledge and expertise available to me to help my clients. This is a unique resource of industry professionals that I just wouldn’t have available to me operating by myself.”

He concludes, “I am close to completing my first 12 months and I am currently working on some fantastic projects with top tier companies, FTSE 100, supported by the ERA team.

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So far, for me, ERA has proved to be ‘a perfect marriage’ and I couldn’t be happier with my decision.” – Stephen