Not every appointment needs an operational manager on site. Plenty of cases are asset realisations, dormant companies or businesses that ceased trading long before the practitioner was appointed. Recognising which cases genuinely need an operator — and getting one in early rather than after things start slipping — is what separates a controlled trading administration from a firefight.
The first situation is any trading business with staff on shift at the point of appointment. If people are working, customers are being served and stock is moving, someone has to be responsible for that operation from day one. Office holders can hold the appointment and the strategy, but they cannot personally run a rota across multiple sites while also handling creditor communications, marketing the business and meeting statutory duties. The gap that opens between appointment and operational control is where value is lost.
The second is a multi-site operation. One site can sometimes be held together remotely with a strong existing manager in place. Five, fifteen or fifty sites cannot. Multi-site distress produces inconsistent local decisions, uneven cash controls and wide variation in compliance, and it needs a single operational lead with visibility across every location and standardised reporting from each one.
The third is the sudden departure of the existing management team. Directors resign, general managers resign, and in many pre-appointment situations they have already gone. Where the people who held the operational knowledge have left, that knowledge has to be rebuilt quickly by someone who has run this type of business before — how the sector trades, what the cost drivers are, what breaks first, and what the sequence of recovery looks like.
The fourth is a going-concern sale process. What a buyer visits determines what a buyer pays. A demoralised operation with lapsed compliance, unreliable numbers and no one clearly in charge attracts break-up bids. A stable, well-run operation with a clean weekly trading pack and evidenced compliance attracts going-concern offers and defensible value. Operational management during the marketing period is a value protection measure, not an overhead.
The fifth is regulated or licensed activity — hospitality, care, leisure, food production, or anything with statutory inspection regimes. Compliance obligations do not pause on appointment, and the consequences of a lapse fall on the office holder. Having someone on site who knows precisely what has to be in place, and who documents that it was, is direct risk mitigation.
There are earlier warning signs too, often visible before formal appointment. Repeated short-term cash crises with no reliable forecast. Key operational staff leaving in clusters. Suppliers moving to pro forma terms. Missed statutory inspections. Sites operating with no manager present. Where an adviser sees several of these together, an operational assessment before appointment usually produces a better-informed strategy and a faster start.
Structuring the engagement well matters as much as making it. Scope, day rate or fixed monthly fee, reporting rhythm and expected exit should all be agreed in writing before the manager starts, with no recruitment fee and no notice period. The office holder retains authority; the interim manager holds delegated operational responsibility and reports against it. Exit is defined at the outset — handover to a buyer, to a permanent team, to a successor provider, or into an orderly closure — and revisited as the case develops.
The practical test is simple. If the business is still trading and you would struggle to name the person who will decide whether the doors open tomorrow morning, you need operational support, and you need it before the weekend rather than after it.
AJS works directly with insolvency practitioners and joint administrators to assess trading operations and deploy experienced managers, usually within days of appointment.