A Leader's Perspective:
Our Organic Growth Journey as part of Volaris Group: Part 2 of 2
This article belongs to a multi-part series through the lens of our business leaders themselves.
Join Andy Wheeler, Managing Director of Artifax, as he shares some of the drivers that have supported Artifax’s tremendous growth since acquisition. A must-read read for tech entrepreneurs and professional managers.
Connect with Andy on LinkedIn to learn more as his journey with Artifax and Volaris Group progresses.
Artifax accelerates growth with the support of Managing Director, Andy Wheeler
Serving the arts & culture industry with event management solutions, Artifax Managing Director, Andy Wheeler, and his team have driven immense growth in the years following the 2019 acquisition.
In a recent interview, Wheeler spoke to his journey with Artifax pre-and post-acquisition, and the impact thereafter.
Now achieving double-digit annual growth, Wheeler shares some of the best practices and strategies that have driven Artifax’s growth and profitability.
Volaris often speaks to carving a path forward to assist companies with growth objectives. Can you tell us more about some of the drivers that supported Artifax’s organic growth?
The excitement I had when we first joined Volaris remains true to this day. With access to the Volaris resources – best practices, benchmarks, processes, and templates, as well as in-house specialists and hundreds of leaders across the group of companies - opportunities for Artifax continue to arise.
"In addition to accomplishing our goal to achieve double-digit growth each year, we recently doubled our organic growth compared to the year prior."
-- Andy Wheeler, Managing Director, Artifax
Artifax has leveraged the Volaris playbook to advance our growth strategies in several areas:
• Strategic planning: Shortly after the acquisition we had a strategic planning session; bringing together our senior management team provided a multitude of benefits. Collectively establishing our vision for advancing Artifax’s growth strategies brought forth operational efficiency and our alignment enabled us to cohesively cascade our strategic plan through the business.
• Vertical focus: We took a fresh look at our customer data and decided to focus on our key vertical. As part of Volaris, we are decentralized and have the autonomy to drive our decisions, but it was comforting to be encouraged to strengthen our position within the arts & culture industry. Our staff has loved focusing on our core market and our clients value our dedication and mission-critical solutions.
• Synergizing goals with culture: We set actionable goals beyond the boundaries of what we thought would be easily attainable and remodelled our set of metrics to measure the performance of our business. While financials and growth percentages are important, instead of focusing only on figures, we centred on what that growth would mean for the company – for our clients and employees. The numbers are fundamental for tracking and planning progress. However, it is the passion for what we do, the sectors we work in and the types of organisations our software and services empower that really drive us.
• Talent Development: Volaris uses a formalized talent development process to set intentional coaching and mentoring with each individual employee of an acquired business. This includes cascading business goals to individual contributions – For Artifax, one of the greatest improvements we’ve seen is the transparency between business goals and day-to-day activities. Our employees are continuously developing competencies and are empowered knowing that they have an individual contribution to our overall success.
• Global Network: Volaris is an intellectual infrastructure of people who share knowledge and best practices on running software companies for vertical markets. Knowing that it’s not just Artifax anymore and having access to a much wider support network has proven monumental for our growth. I remind my team of this often, including onboarding any new employees. In one of our town halls, we communicated how Volaris leaders were directly investing in our success. It has been very beneficial for us to take part in that network.
All the aforementioned items are only achieved if you have the talent within your team to execute. Attributing Artifax’s success to you and your team, can you tell us more about their professional development journeys?
Prior to acquisition, one of the challenges we had as a company was the idea of a glass ceiling. As part of the Volaris family, and as our growth accelerates, so do the opportunities for our employees. This, in turn, has boosted morale.
There have been several promotions throughout Artifax, and we were able to build a new layer of middle management within the company; allowing more opportunities for our employees to step into leadership roles.
Not only is there an opportunity to progress within our existing business structure; but as we move through organic growth opportunities, into initiatives and acquisitive growth, it will open new doors for our employees.
At Volaris, we empower our leaders through decentralization and supported autonomy; and we develop talent through several supportive programs. Make sure to check back in a few months to hear from Tim Leighton, Operations Director of Artifax as he progresses through our 2023 Executive Accelerator Program.
