Insolvency practitioners are experts in the process. What they very often need alongside that expertise is somebody who has personally run a hotel, a holiday park, a retail estate or a distribution operation, and who can walk into a site on the day of appointment and take charge of it.
That is the distinction between advisory and operational support. An adviser assesses and recommends. An operational manager holds the role — stands on site, directs the team, deals with the guests, signs off the rota, manages the supplier who is refusing to deliver, and reports back at the end of the day.
For an office holder, the practical benefits are straightforward. Trading can continue while a sale is marketed, which almost always improves the realisable value of the business over a closure. Staff and customer risk is contained by somebody with the authority to act. And the office holder receives operational reporting that stands up to scrutiny from creditors and from their own compliance requirements.
The engagement should have a defined shape from the outset: what is being taken control of, what the reporting looks like, what decisions sit with the office holder, and what the exit looks like — whether that is a sale, an orderly wind-down or a handover to a purchaser's management team.
The wrong time to look for this capability is on the morning of appointment. Practitioners who have a relationship with an operational team in advance can deploy within days rather than weeks, which is usually the difference between trading on and closing the doors.