RiverFlex

[Riverflex]

Full clarification of the Riverflex business

Hi DaveB,

I appreciate the confusion that can arise from the multiple Riverflex entities. Thanks for highlighting the questions you have - since others might have the same. I can also understand that you concluded we were part of Riverflex Limited from your searches online - that’s natural because the data is not very clear and the name quite unique. However, I assure you that the Riverflex Limited business is completely and strictly unrelated to our Riverflex company (except for the name).

We support and champion the independent professional community so it's important to us that we clarify any confusion. So it’s a long read but I will go into the full details now:

Back when I was working in London I lead the CRM technology team (35+ people) at Capgemini UK. It was a great experience and I wanted to start a consultancy together with a colleague of mine from the same team. Our aim was to begin a salesforce.com consultancy. However, we only got as far as choosing a name - Riverflex (that I came up with) - and establishing the legal entity in Dec 2009. Shortly thereafter (Jan 2010) I decided to relocate to the Netherlands for personal reasons. I immediately agreed with with my business partner that I would not be involved in Riverflex Limited. At this point, we had not launched, nothing was committed concept-wise or financially and he was still fully employed. However, my business partner decided to continue, leaving fixed employment to go independent and build a small business. He used Riverflex as a contracting company to do projects. He was very successful in that and today he is also the head of CRM at Hive, Centrica and is now also launching his own new venture. I took absolutely no part in the business of Riverflex Limited or anything he has done since then.

Because company accounts are filed at the end of the accounting year, my termination as Company Director was only registered officially in Dec 29 2010. For some reason, on Company House records I was then terminated again as Company Director, and Secretary in July 2011. I'm not sure why these are the records for July 2011. However, as mentioned I undertook absolutely no business activity nor was I financially involved in any way in Riverflex Limited. I had already relocated to the Netherlands in 2010 and decided to re-join Deloitte.

Last year in 2018, I decided to leave Deloitte where I had progressed to the level of Partner. I chose this course because I want to build a new kind of consulting company based upon bringing independent consultants together. More financial recognition goes to the consultants in this model and when done well the client gets a better team since we have the opportunity to carefully select the specialist skills needed for each project, rather than only the employees you have within your company. After coming up with the idea, I was looking for a company name. Still really liking the name Riverflex, my old business partner kindly let me use the name and the Riverflex.com URL. Meanwhile, he still retained the original Riverflex Limited company as a legitimate separate business.

The Riverflex.com business you find today consists of Riverflex International, Riverflex Trading UK and Riverflex Trading NL BV. We operate in both the Netherlands and UK and this is why we have the multi-business and holding structure. These set of businesses have no relation to the Riverflex Limited company. We are owned by two business partners each with over 18 years professional consulting experience. The business partners are not husband and wife. We do not use SJD accountants. Riverflex Trading UK is not registered nor located at the same address as Riverflex Limited. We do no work together with Riverflex Limited, have no contracts together and we are not involved at all in meetings or operations of each others’ businesses.

Hopefully the above fully clarifies the situation between our businesses. If you’d like to have contact with my previous business partner then I’ve let him know and he is happy to provide written confirmation.

On your second point, I appreciate your concern on the GDPR compliance of the privacy policy on our website. We just re-launched our website around 2-3 weeks ago. It was a wholesale overhaul done with the support of an external onshore & nearshore agency. We will check the privacy policy immediately and if needed get it rectified. We absolutely operate within the law and process data according to GDPR regulation. What is even more important to us beyond this - is always to be ethical and respectful of people's information - both consultant and client.

So to round-off… Riverflex is now just a year old but we have had a great start. We have a community of over 300 consultants and are working with many globally recognised brands - some of which you can see on our website Digital Consulting & Interim Management | Riverflex or LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/company/riv...wAsMember=true

We really believe that independent consulting is creating a new lifestyle option for all professionals and can continue to grow as a career choice. One of the challenges we have heard from independents, however, is to remain connected and be able to grow into more senior roles (when that is desired). So solving this is one of Riverflex’s main goals. We are building an open consulting firm that connects independent professionals together so that they can learn and exchange knowledge, join-up for projects and grow into more senior roles. In essence, we are striving to create a new consulting model that is more rewarding to the independents than an permanently employed model but where you still have strong connection to a community and sources of support.

I appreciate the confusion and hopefully I’ve fully clarified the situation. It’s very important to us because we want to work with the independent consulting community on making even greater impact in business.

Please feel free to reach to us directly if you have further questions.

Thanks,

Victor

[quackhandle]

No connection or interests on my side. Claims to be a challenger in the management consulting space, utilizing a digital platform and raising the bar on value proposition. Has anyone heard of them or dealt with them? I know what it looks like to me.

Management-speak BS. That's a new one.

qh

[pauldee]

[Cid]

Wont see them on here again then....

[DaveB]

Hi Ruasonid & DaveB,

I'm one of the founders of Riverflex. We are an open consulting firm. We are just one year old, having started official operations in March 2018 (our legal entity was founded in late 2017). There is another legal entity called Riverflex in the UK established somewhat earlier - it is still running - this has no relation to our business. Our parent company is Riverflex International Limited.

Not strictly true. According to Companies House you were a Director and company secretary for the older Riverflex Ltd. for around 18 months.

You also appear to have another company running, Riverflex Trading UK Ltd. registered at the same offices, the shares of which are held by Riverflex International.

You'll appreciate it if this causes some confusion when people do their due diligence on a company they may be providing services to, and expect to get paid by.

Your Privacy Policy is also horribly out of date and not compliant with the requirements of the GDPR. If you are operating according to that policy you may actually be breaking the law at this point. Feel free to message me if you need some consultancy on this

[Riverflex]

Hi Ruasonid & DaveB,

I'm one of the founders of Riverflex. We are an open consulting firm. We are just one year old, having started official operations in March 2018 (our legal entity was founded in late 2017). There is another legal entity called Riverflex in the UK established somewhat earlier - it is still running - this has no relation to our business. Our parent company is Riverflex International Limited.

Previous to Riverflex, both my business partner and I have worked since 2000 at the highest end of consulting for top tier management consulting firms. We really enjoy consulting, but believe that there is an opportunity to improve on the model to deliver more for clients as well as reward consultants better. This is the reason we founded Riverflex. You can read more about our background here <mod snip - riverflexdotcom>

This month we are one year old. We now have 8 corporate clients across the UK and NL and over 300 professionals in our open consulting community. We are focused on high quality consulting in the digital, data and innovation space. Our vetted community includes, ex-McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte consultants, design agency (AKQA, Deloitte Digital, WPP/Publicis) and IT (eBay, made.com, asos.com, bol.com). We are always open for top independent consultants and small partners to join us and be connected, so that together we can deliver excellent multi-disciplinary solutions for our clients.

Please feel free to reach to directly to us if you have any further questions,

Regards,

Victor Hoong

[DaveB]

No connection or interests on my side. <management bulltulip>. Has anyone heard of them or dealt with them? I know what it looks like to me.

I know what it sounds like as well.

Company house filing show it's a husband and wife/partner operation, cash balance has been going down steadily over the last couple of years but not broke. Company owes the Director about £6k as of August last year. SJD are the accountants which makes me think they are a small contractor business trying to sound bigger than they really are.

[ruasonid]

No connection or interests on my side. Claims to be a challenger in the management consulting space, utilizing a digital platform and raising the bar on value proposition. Has anyone heard of them or dealt with them? I know what it looks like to me.