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Mo Abudu
established Vic Lawrence & Associates (formerly Newage
Communications Limited) in 1993 as a privately-owned specialist
human resources development company offering services in
executive development.
The name of the company changed from Newage Communications
Limited to Vic Lawrence & Associates Limited in March 1998.
At the heart of Vic Lawrence's mission was the provision of
quality executive training and development services, working
with its international alliance partners to design, manage and
deliver quality programmes for the private and public sectors in
Nigeria.
In the year 2000, Mo Abudu was keen to rapidly grow the company
by increasing its range of services and client base. However,
she realised the need to institutionalise the business and make
significant investment in people and infrastructure.
In 2001, VLA expanded its service offerings to include
recruitment and selection services. Mo Abudu having successfully
managed a high street recruitment firm in the UK for several
years, found her expertise in this area invaluable in expanding
the business.
By 2002, VLA again expanded its offerings to include Human
Resource Solutions, providing services in the areas of Reward
and Performance Management.
With VLA's business growing rapidly and VLA enjoying a huge
market share in the area of training and development, the
organization found a need for the development of a good quality
training and conferencing facilities in the Lagos area for
delivery of its training programmes and business retreats. Vic
Lawrence decided to promote the development of a purpose-built
executive centre with residential facilities.
Vic Lawrence approached SME Manager Limited which resulted in
SME Manager agreeing to consider an equity investment in both
Vic Lawrence and the Executive Centre, The Protea Hotel, Oakwood
Park,Lekki. The Protea Hotel, Oakwood Park is a purpose built
complex, offering state of the art training and conferencing
facilities.
Partnering with SME Manager, provided Vic Lawrence the
credibility required to attract high potential human resources
and penetrate blue-chip customers that hitherto may have been
difficult to access. Furthermore, SME Manager focused
extensively on institutionalising Vic Lawrence, which has become
a robust institution far from its early beginning when it
revolved around Mo Abudu.
Three years after the investment, not only has Vic Lawrence been
able to increase and improve the quality of its service
delivery, its customer base has also increased significantly. It
has surpassed some of the leaders in its industry; increasing
turnover by 400%, staff strength by over 500%.
Given the significant profitable growth recorded by the Company
between 2001 and 2004, the need to further strengthen the
management with high calibre talent was identified by Mo Abudu.
This was important to enable VLA consolidate its position in the
industry. The indications were that for such calibre of
management, their interests needed to be aligned with the
Company, hence Mo Abudu's decision to invite shareholding
partners into the company.
As the minimum investment period of three years as specified
under SMEEIS had been achieved and the business really did not
require an additional cash injection, in June 2004 Mo Abudu
approached SME Manager with an acceptable buy-out offer in
collaboration with an experienced Human Resources professional,
Alero Otobo, former Head Human Capital Development, United Bank
of Africa (UBA) and Bunmi Lawson, former Executive Director of
FATE Foundation whom have since joined the company as Executive
Directors and part owners.
VLA was the first organization in the SMEEIS scheme to
successfully exit.
The exit of SME was completed in March 2005.
VLA has now reached a new dawn with the leadership of Mo Abudu,
Ola Ogunneye and other members of the VLA team. The VLA team
includes five senior industry sector heads, specialising in the
areas of telecoms, oil & gas, manufacturing, finance and public
sector services.
VLA feels sufficiently confident in their ability to understand
the people management and HR issues within the identified
sectors and is equipped to handle a variety of HR consultancy
assignments to include: learning management, recruitment and
selection, induction, career development, performance & reward
management and exit management.
From November 1, 2005, the operational model for all VLA
assignments will be governed by the principles of the
People-Centric Strategy™.
People-Centric Strategy™ is an innovative organizational
improvement programme designed to advance and add value to an
organisation's bottom line through the alignment of the goals
and needs of its people and that of the organisation.
We are proud to say that People-Centric Strategy™ is a VLA
trademark, developed by VLA and wholly owned by VLA.
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