From investment to exit – what’s your strategy for accelerating growth?

Aligning performance and growth for commercial success

In a high-growth business focused on delivering agreed revenue and profitability, how do you reassure financial sponsors? Can you demonstrate to investors that you are on track to meet your business goals? Are your processes and data robust enough to support the business as it changes through the investment journey?

Dean Carroll, Managing Director at Xpedition discusses how data should be viewed as a powerful asset to drive performance and, how companies can ensure revenues and growth targets are met by applying the right data strategy and technology solutions.

The last few years have forced companies to re-evaluate how they do business. Meeting challenges head on, such as changing to new hybrid models of remote and office working, to managing the customer experience with new go-to-market processes and service delivery, have necessitated a rethink of the status quo.

For many high growth businesses, these challenges have been a constant on the boardroom agenda. It is imperative that high growth businesses are laser focused on process efficiencies, meeting performance goals and accurate reporting. Companies that are able to demonstrate the how, the why and importantly the results to financial sponsors are in the best position possible to achieve business success.

Managing an Accelerated Growth Trajectory

Faced with meeting demanding revenue goals, such early stage or high growth-focused businesses must achieve the following:

• dentify potential technology solutions to streamline processes and reduce operating costs in order to accelerate the value delivered
• eliminate departmental silos.

Data provides the key for business success

According to McKinsey, being able to share and analyse organisational data underpins the success of a PE backed company “silos between departments and functions have no place in a PE-backed company. Portfolio-company CEOs need to get comfortable with a non-hierarchical, horizontal culture.[i]”

PE-backed companies need to be agile, to be able to analyse data to make informed decisions that create value. However, like many organisations, often the data resides in separate, unconnected departments – finance, marketing, sales, supply chain, HR. Extracting this data, to manipulate and report on it from the different departments is essential.

Data-driven analytics are key to help prioritise opportunities and be able to report to investors on progress against the planned strategy. Using real-time data can also help to assess business models and plan for the future. It can inform your strategy and give better visibility on everything from forecasting to financials, essential for growth.

Situational analysis – four areas to consider for data agility

Xpedition is a Microsoft Solutions Partner that works with fast growth organisations at different stages of their investment journey, empowering them to identify possible improvements in processes and new data models to enable long-term success. We have defined the following four areas to support data agility:

1. Data governance and compliance – accurate, actionable data is an asset that provides the confidence to make crucial business decisions at speed. The barriers to success often surround the organisational data and the disconnected processes making it difficult for sales and marketing teams to make informed decisions. One set of data means ‘one version of the truth’ which can be used for modelling and insights to develop new products and services, improve the customer experience, loyalty and increase revenues. Using AI for data analytics can also help identify value-enhancing opportunities among prospective target and business models.

• Financial control – having real time visibility of financial performance is essential. Again, this is underpinned by the need to connect data to inform business decisions.  Automating processes and providing accurate reporting and forecasting enable what- if scenario modelling. This can help to overcome uncertainty and support decisions that improve operations and reduce costs.

• Operational excellence – automating processes can help to accelerate time to market. Agile business processes can connect departments, whether sales to finance or operations and logistics to customer service – to help get products or services faster to market. Demonstrating the resulting improvements to revenue streams will be music to investors’ ears.

• Selling in a digital marketplace – in a digital or transformational business, managing sales and marketing feedback loops is vital for a smooth customer journey. Identifying issues, improvements and making rapid changes to processes to improve the customer experience can increase sales and enable growth. Introducing new technologies, such as AI can further extend service provision with an ‘always on’ approach.

The right technology delivers results now – and empowers future growth

Whether a PE backed company is simply looking to launch and exit as quickly as possible or looking for long-term growth and scale, it’s important to have the right technology platform. Accelerating from the initial investment deal to scaling up operations can mean that companies are lean on technology and people. As well as ad hoc processes and siloed data, they are often also using non-enterprise systems, resulting in inefficiencies.

The right technology is an enabler, not just a cost of doing business. A scalable technology foundation can help departments to connect and collaborate, enable shared insights and ensure the right security is in place.

Microsoft’s cloud technology portfolio is standardised and scalable and helps keep things simple. It enables the flexibility to expand in line with a company’s growth and you can integrate with existing workplace platforms, as well as support new innovations.

Working with an experienced technology partner can help to identify, prioritise and implement solutions that align to your business goals for desired growth. A working prototype and a collaborative project approach for deployment ensures the required results are delivered, while minimising any risk to business continuity. Demonstrating a rapid return on investment and stakeholder buy-in along the way helps to reassure your investors that the business is on track to meet revenue targets and growth.

To find out more about how Xpedition can help your organisation accelerate your growth strategy, get in touch.

[i] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/private-equity-and-principal-investors/our-insights/a-playbook-for-newly-minted-private-equity-portfolio-company-ceos