The team

Meet the publishing experts

Behind Adept is a small team of publishing and technology specialists. Between us we've worked at CDS Global, WDIS, Optima, Wilmington, VNU and more, on titles you'll know. You'll deal with these people directly.

Senior management

Rob Sherwood

Managing Director and founder

Rob has spent his whole career in publishing data. At the bureaux WDIS, Optima and CDS Global he looked after subscriptions and circulation for the Financial Times, Haymarket, Incisive Media, VNU, Newsquest and The Economist, among others. He founded Adept to give publishers a bureau and software partner that understands how their business actually runs, and he's still the person most clients speak to first.

Talk to Rob about: choosing between Avio, Adeptis and the bureau, the 2027 subscription rules, moving from another bureau or system.

More about Rob at rob-sherwood.co.uk

Paul Mitchell

Chairman

Paul trained in accounting and has run businesses for most of his career, and he has been involved in publishing since the 1980s. As chairman he keeps an eye on the long term: steady growth, sound finances and doing right by clients.

Jason Wheeler

Technical Director

Jason leads the in-house development team that builds and supports Avio and Adeptis. He decides how changes are built, tested and released, and makes sure what we build is secure, fast and dependable. He's the reason a change you ask for on Monday can be live within days.

Talk to Jason about: integrations and APIs, security and data protection, how a change would be built.

The main players

Kevin Venn

Systems Manager

Kevin is a seasoned systems developer and manager who has spent his career on subscription systems, at CDS Global, Abacus e-media, WDIS and AI Bureau. He knows the way bureau systems are built from the inside, which matters when your data is coming across from one.

Talk to Kevin about: subscription systems and data structures, bringing data across from an old system.

Simon Torrington

Data and Audit Specialist

Simon is our data and audit specialist. SQL, data cleaning and circulation audits are his bread and butter. He runs the regular checks for duplicates, incomplete addresses and job titles that don't fit your terms of control, and when an ABC or BPA audit comes round, he prepares the figures and the evidence behind them.

Talk to Simon about: ABC and BPA audits, data cleaning and de-duplication, bespoke reports.

Julie Sherwood

Circulation and Marketing Specialist

Julie has managed the circulations of many B2B magazines, at Wilmington, VNU, Datateam and Quantum Publishing. She knows controlled circulation and paid subscriptions from the publisher's side of the desk, so she knows what you need from a bureau before you ask.

Talk to Julie about: controlled circulation and qualification, circulation marketing and renewals.

And the people you don't see

Our in-house development team, here in the UK, builds and supports Avio and Adeptis. Most of them are publishing experts as well as developers, which is a big part of why we can turn changes round in days.