As part of an ongoing series, we’re sharing real-time trending topics we are hearing from our 500+ PE firm clients. In our most recent installment, one of our Managing Consultants, Scott Bellinger, talks about how leading PE firms are utilizing third parties to manage procurement issues that have been brought on due to inflation and supply chain issues roaring out of control.
Learn more about the unique ways in which PE firms are utilizing third-party procurement groups by watching the video below.
Interested in connecting with a third-party procurement group or any other type of third party? Contact us here. You can also learn more about the specific ways we drive value for PE firms by connecting them to the exact-fit resources they need by reading our case studies.
As part of an ongoing series, we’re sharing real-time trending topics we are hearing from our 500+ PE firm clients. In our most recent installment, one of our Managing Consultants, Keenan Kolinsky, talks about one of the ways private equity firms are responding to The Great Resignation – Interim Executives. He shares why the need for interim executives is rising in private equity, how they can be used, and why they are beneficial especially to PE firms.
Interested in learning more about interim executives, how our clients have utilized them, and how we help? Check out our Interim Executives Hub to find case studies, scorecards, and more.
You can also learn more from Keenan in the video below.
Interested in connecting with an interim executive? Contact us here or click the “start a project” button above. We would be happy to promptly begin assisting you.
As part of an ongoing series, we’re sharing real-time trending topics we are hearing from our 500+ PE firm clients. In our most recent installment, one of our Private Equity Consultants, Ryan Perkins, talks about the significant upswing COVID caused in the price of inputs. He shares two approaches companies can take in order to solve for this challenge, the negative impacts of each approach, and how BluWave can help in these scenarios.
Ryan gives an example of how we recently helped a high volume CPG business update their pricing across their product set, stay competitive with their eCommerce counterparts, and grow margins across their portfolio.
You can read another example of how we’ve helped a client with pricing strategy in this case study.
Learn more in the below video.
Do you need to get connected to a pricing analysis consultant or any other third-party resource? Be sure to click the “Start a Project” button above, or contact us here and we would be happy to get started in assisting you.
As part of an ongoing series, we’re sharing real-time trending topics we are hearing from our 500+ PE fund clients. In our most recent installment, our consulting manager, Scott Bellinger, talks about why we have seen an increase in go-to-market & growth strategy needs and how we are supporting clients with those. He shares that growth strategy is continuously increasing, with GTM being the third most used Value Creation use case in 2021, according to the BluWave Value Creation Index.
One of the most common ways we are helping clients with growth strategy needs is by connecting PE funds and their portfolio companies to senior advisors and consultants that can help them expand their reach outside of their current established market.
You can read another example of how we’ve helped a client with a go-to-market need in this case study.
Learn more in the below video.
Do you need to get connected to a GTM or growth strategy resource? Be sure to click the “Start a Project” button above, or contact us here and we would be happy to get started in assisting you.
BluWave works with over 500 PE funds from around the globe, connecting them with pre-vetted, best-in-class, third-party service providers across a variety of resource and functional areas. From information technology and manufacturing to healthcare, consumer goods, and beyond, our clients are expert business builders. In other words, they have their heads in the game and their hands on the pulse of news you can use.
Check out the latest, curated collection of reports, insights, and musings from a handful of our PE fund clients on everything from differentiated investments in 2022 to The Great Resignation, cloud security, and sales enablement.
As a wrap-up to 2021, Joe Zidle from Blackstone reflects on differentiated investment opportunities in the coming year. He shares why certain global economies will weather coming headwinds better than others, why he predicts that the ability to generate alpha will increasingly drive outperformance in the US, and more.
In this episode of the Private Equity Funcast, Jimmy discusses the macro trends that are driving The Great Resignation and how it is specifically impacting the middle market with Tim Schumm of Lucas James Talent Partners. They share why the middle market may be feeling the impacts of this phenomenon more acutely and tactics these businesses can implement in order to ensure they have the talent they need.
Permira talks about one of their recent investments in the cloud security space and explains why enterprise workloads are increasingly moving to the cloud infrastructure. They also explain the concept of containers in the cloud and how that is forcing businesses to rethink their cybersecurity tools.
Katja and Kunal from TCV share their key takeaways from a recent episode of the Growth Hacks podcast, where Scott Santucci shared why the main lesson he advises his clients to do is simplify their sales processes. They talk through the value of the commercial ratio, tips for aligning organizational economic value with the needs of your customer base, and more.
As part of an ongoing series, we’re sharing real-time trending topics we are hearing from our 500+ PE fund clients. In our most recent installment, our consulting manager, Keenan Kolinsky, talks about the impacts of inflation he is hearing across our clients. We are hearing this manifest in two primary ways:
A surge in leveraging specialized pricing experts to help adjust portfolio company pricing structures
The increased need for sourcing and procurement resources to identify and secure cost-effective supplier and logistics relationships
To learn more, watch the video below.
Interested in learning more about the cases Keenan mentioned, view them here.
As a deal quarterback in private equity, Sean Mooney often struggled with getting connected to the PE-grade, specialized resources he needed to drive differential success. Sean found himself spending lots of time searching for providers on google and calling friends in search of an exact-fit service provider. This made the diligence process time-consuming and stressful. It also left only a small amount of time for the other things that matter. In order to combat this pressing issue, Sean came up with the idea for BluWave. In fact, Sean created BluWave specifically with deal quarterbacks in mind and is someone who did the job himself. Now, BluWave helps deal quarterbacks get time back in their day and gives them confidence in the third-party resources that they are utilizing.
We are here to provide deal quarterbacks with the exact-fit, private equity grade service provider they need, exactly when they need them.
If you are a deal quarterback that struggles with due diligence or value creation, we would be happy to connect with you and provide for the need you have, just contact us here.
As a private equity deal QB, BluWave founder & CEO, Sean Mooney, faced challenges in the value creation process. He felt as though he was consistently getting generalist results from generalist providers. He also faced the pressure of knowing that one wrong move could follow him around for the rest of his career in private equity. After dealing with these challenges and working his way up to be a Partner at a PE firm, Sean decided to create the solution to the problems he always had by founding BluWave. The solution he envisioned gave deal QBs the exact provider they need at the exact time they need them. Providers who have a specialty in specific areas will be connected with the private equity deal QBs as soon as the need arises. This gives success with ease for private equity deal QBs who are lacking value creation with their service providers. That is exactly what BluWave has become today.
BluWave helps with value creation for deal QBs by providing them with:
BluWave works with over 500 PE funds from around the globe, connecting them with pre-vetted, best-in-class, third-party service providers across a variety of resource and functional areas. From information technology and manufacturing to healthcare, consumer goods, and beyond, our clients are expert business builders. In other words, they have their heads in the game and their hands on the pulse of news you can use.
Check out the latest, curated collection of reports, insights, and musings from a handful of our PE fund clients on some of PE’s recent hot topics including rising inflation, ESG, product development, and human capital.
Joe Zidle, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist of the Private Wealth Solutions Group at Blackstone, shares insights into where investors should look for returns in an environment that will likely soon feature higher inflation, less policy support, and muted returns.
In this short video, members of the Apax Partners team explain why “impact” is a distinct investment category, why it’s the natural next step for all PE firms, the importance of strong ESG credentials, and success stories from their own impact portfolio.
Matthew Jacobs, Investment Director at Livingbridge, shares insights from his conversation with Mark Davison, former Chief Data Officer at Callcredit and current non-executive director at Mobysoft, about successful product development in software companies.
While effective human capital strategy remains at the forefront of every business leader’s mind given The Great Resignation, John Broderick, Operating Partner at Argosy Private Equity, shares keys to building an engaging and high-performing culture that naturally drives the execution of strategy.
We’d be happy to provide you with PE-grade third parties to help you with any of the above or with any other need you may have, just give us a shout. Additionally, view what some of our clients had to say last month here.
It was great to be in person with over 200 leading PE ops partners and to have a discussion with those that are talent-focused about what their jobs look like, now that talent operating partners make up 34% of all operating partners, versus the 3% that comprised the PEI ops partner forum 3 years ago.
We have seen the increase in human capital importance firsthand, with our proprietary data showing human capital initiatives increasing to 39% of PE activity this quarter compared to 17% in Q1 2018.
In addition to the increase of importance that has been placed on human capital initiatives in PE, data has shown that they have also become wide-ranging, covering everything from interim leadership to exec assessment diligence.
Given this context going into the panel on what makes a great PE talent partner, the below are some of the topline takeaways:
Talent roles vary widely across funds:
When talking to other panelists, we discovered that some of their talent roles are more internally focused on HR within the PE firm itself, and some are exclusively externally focused on portco executives only. It was also discovered that roles vary additionally by how and when they get involved.
Working with the deal team:
The panelists all agreed there have been changes in the amount of time available to fully execute on all of the responsibilities that may have fallen on talent in the past. They said that with this change, funds need to be more regimented and prioritized in terms of how and where they spend their talent team’s time. In terms of executive assessments, interestingly—some assessments have become less comprehensive. BUT, funds have also become more creative with deploying assessments given the tight market. Many are giving offers that are contingent on assessments and background checks going well.
For work with deal teams—the primary takeaway is that the earlier involvement, the better. Roles amongst our panelists truly varied as to when they got tapped and for how comprehensive a remit, i.e. “do this assessment” vs “ride along on the deal execution to help us spot red flags.”
Pressurized market:
Funds have become more regimented due to Covid. They have discovered efficiencies in the process that were developed during the times when everyone was remote and are now helping funds keep up in a highly pressurized market. These playbooks and scorecards have been developed for both internal hiring and monitoring the health of various portcos from a human capital perspective, i.e. turnover, depth of exec bench, etc.
If your firm needs human capital help, we can help make the job easier by connecting you with exact-fit interim executives, HR diligence providers, executive assessment providers, and more. Contact us here if we can be of help and check out our Interim CFO Hub to learn more about how interim executives can benefit you.
Every quarter our team analyzes the projects we work on with our 500+ PE fund clients to get a bird’s eye view of the market. In this video, our leadership team shares the trends we are seeing across due diligence and value creation. Watch the video below to learn more.
If you would like to get a copy of the report, reach out directly to your BluWave contact or our team at insights@bluewave.net and we’ll be happy to assist.
