Applied chief executive not currently eyeing further European expansion

Applied Systems chief executive Taylor Rhodes has said the business has no immediate plans to expand further across Europe.

During the Applied Net 2024 conference in Nashville, Rhodes was asked whether the software house would be looking to broaden its European reach beyond the current operations in the UK and Ireland.

While he said this was not something the firm was looking at right now, he claimed the business was keeping options open.

Rhodes said: “We made the decision to call it Applied Systems Europe for the very reason that we wanted to keep our options open down the road.

“With every opportunity to access a new geographical location, the final mile in the journey is always the most difficult and with the UK, that final mile was very different to the US.

“In the future we may look further afield in Europe, but it is not something we are looking at currently.”

UK growth

Rhodes also said that while Applied had made multiple acquisitions over the last few years, within the UK and Ireland just one deal had been struck in 2023.

However, he said most of the growth had been organic and that the goal for the UK operations was to have a proposition that can compete on its merits.

Rhodes added: “The chief executive at Applied Systems Europe, Tom Needs, has the same rights as any of the other management teams in the US.

”He can bring us clever ideas as to how we grow the business and we will evaluate them.

“However, despite the investment we have made in acquisitions, the vast majority of our growth has been organic. We have not been buying businesses with big customer bases.

“In the UK our strategy is simple, which is build a good solution and compete in the market on merit.”