PE Firms Archives - Page 32 of 45

Immediate Board Member for CEO Support with Niche Expertise

Service Area: Board Member

Client Type: Lower-Middle-Market PE Firm

Service Provider Type: Senior Advisor

Industry: Manufacturing

The Need

Manufacturing Company Board Member

A Partner at a LMM PE firm came to us with an immediate need for a board member for the manufacturing company they recently closed on. The PE firm bought the company from the founder and was in need of an experienced outside board member that could serve as a sounding board for the CEO, work on strategy to improve growth and help professionalize the organization.

The Challenge

Connect with Local Expert

They were in urgent need of an individual local to the area with experience in the industry, experience in transitioning a family-owned business to a professionally managed organization and the ability to commit to more than quarterly board meetings.

How BluWave Helped

Select Pre-Vetted Board Members Presented

Leveraging our founder’s 20 years in private equity, we have extensive frameworks for assessing PE-grade board member needs. BluWave utilizes technology, data and human ingenuity to pre-map, assess, monitor and maintain deep pools of board members that uniquely meet the private equity standard. We interviewed the PE firm to understand their specific key criteria and then identified a select few pre-vetted board members from our invitation-only Business Builders’ Network that fit their exact needs.

The Result

Accelerated Profitability, High-Valuation Sale

Quickly after the initial scoping call, the PE firm was introduced to the first identified exact-fit board member for their needs. After being presented with the select few options, the client selected their ideal choice. The PE firm was able to confidently engage the individual who provided the coaching and support the portco’s CEO needed, helping professionalize the organization and providing support for their strategy and growth needs.

We are uniquely equipped to move quickly for midmarket companies. We have a network of thousands of PE-grade individuals, specifically geared for midmarket companies, that we can tap into in order to connect a firm with the exact-fit board member they need.
-BluWave Consulting Manager

March 2022 Roundup: BluWave Client Insights

April 8, 2022 Delaney Walker

BluWave works with over 500 PE funds from around the globe as well as their portfolio companies and proactive independent companies, 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 and insights 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 ESG to cybersecurity, and inflation to sales.

Advent’s Managing Director, Tricia Glynn, talks with the chair of Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking division about a wide array of topics including investing through an ESG lens; trends in the retail, consumer, and leisure sector; and her economic outlook for 2022.

Listen to their discussion>>>

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated many businesses’ plans to move more and more digital. With this change comes an increased risk in terms of cybersecurity. With a cyberattack estimated to occur every 39 seconds, Blackstone shares insight into how their portco Vectra has developed an innovative solution to this problem.

Learn more >>>

Scot Duncan, MiddleGround co-founding partner, speaks on a panel covering sustainable profitability in manufacturing companies. He shares ways MiddleGround’s portfolio companies are increasing revenue amidst an environment of supply chain challenges and labor shortages.

Watch the panel >>>

ParkerGale’s Paul Stansik is joined by two guests to talk about prospecting and how to get growth right. They share their varying opinions on how to prospect well, the evolving role of the BDR/SDR, and more.

Listen to the podcast >>>

If you are in need of resources that can help you with ESG, cybersecurity, pricing woes, or sales & marketing, we can quickly connect you to the PE-grade, pre-vetted, exact-fit ones you need. Give us a shout.

Read what some of our clients had to say last month.

Event Recap: PEI Operating Partners Human Capital Forum 2022

April 6, 2022 Delaney Walker

Our team recently had the pleasure of sponsoring the 2022 PEI Operating Partners Human Capital Forum in New York. In the below video, Katie Marchetti, BluWave Managing Director, recaps her key takeaways from the conference as a whole as well as the panel she moderated. Key takeaways include:

CHROs are on the rise at both the portco & firm level
Human capital leaders are working with deal teams more in diligence to ensure alignment
Many firms are leading with data on the human capital front

We support more than 500 leading private equity firms in their human capital needs by placing interim CHROs, connecting them with specialized recruiters, introducing them to HR diligence providers, & more. To learn more about how we support PE human capital needs, visit our PE Human Capital Resources hub.

If you have a human capital need or any other need we can support, contact us here. Additionally, if you are a PE talent professional, be sure to join us and other leading PE talent professionals at our next virtual PE Human Capital Forum on May 4th by registering here.

Case Study | Implementing Sophisticated Data Analytics to Drive Efficiency & Improved Decision Making Across Portfolio

April 5, 2022 Delaney Walker

When PE firms purchase a new portfolio company, there are specific reasons for doing so, leading to a specific set of metrics in mind that the firm wants to report on and monitor, such as customer acquisition cost, profit margins, and customer churn. The PE firm’s operations team focuses on optimizing and improving these key metrics by making changes as needed in the company’s operations, marketing, finance, and other functions. Real-time reporting on the key metrics allows an operating partner and key leaders within the business to proactively see situations coming that may require an adjustment.

Detailed reporting on each company within a portfolio, which each have different reporting systems, is a time-consuming task that inhibits the ability to look at metrics across the board in real-time as needed. In order to seek a solution to this problem, a PE firm came to us.

Challenge:

A PE firm operating partner came to us challenged by the lack of integrated systems his portfolio companies had for reporting on key metrics. Each company had different reporting measures for each of its different KPIs and digging into these metrics across each company in the portfolio was inefficient, inhibiting quick decision making, and consuming valuable time.

In order to win back time and monitor his portfolio companies with ease, he came to us in need of a third party that could ultimately create one dashboard that would report on all of the same metrics for each company across the portfolio. Immediately, they were looking for a group that could start by doing this for one portfolio company as a pilot, in order to see if it would be useful if scaled across the entire portfolio.

Solution:

Leveraging our founder’s 20 years in private equity, we have extensive frameworks for assessing PE-grade data analytics needs. BluWave utilizes technology, data, and human ingenuity to pre-map, assess, monitor, and maintain deep pools of data analytics resources that uniquely meet the private equity standard. We interviewed the PE firm to understand their specific key criteria and then connected them to a select pre-vetted data analytics group from our invitation-only Intelligent Marketplace that had the capabilities that fit their exacting needs.

Result:

The selected data analytics group got to work on providing the PE firm with the needed dashboards by first implementing ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) software that could tie all of the pilot portfolio company’s systems into a single source of truth. Once this initial step was done, they were able to begin developing dashboards through a data visualization tool. By first combining all of the systems into a single source of truth, the dashboards were created in a way that would allow them to update in real-time, allowing the PE firm to access key data points for the portfolio company at the click of a button.

This was such a success with the first portfolio company that they were able to implement the ETL software across the portfolio, bringing each company’s data to the same point of maturity and combining it into a single source of truth. This allowed dashboards to not only be created for each separate company, but also allowed for dashboards to be created that connected all of the portfolio companies’ data together in order to analyze portfolio-wide trends. This resulted in time being saved at both the portco and PE level, as well as resulted in significant business improvements being made throughout the portfolio due to trends that the dashboards highlighted.

Download a copy of this case study.

View more case studies to learn how we are helping other leading PE firms drive success with ease.

Interested in connecting with us on your need? Contact us here.

2022 PE Innovator of the Year, MiddleGround Capital

April 1, 2022 Delaney Walker

Our inaugural 2022 Top 50 PE Innovator Awards recognized the top 1% of firms in the private equity industry as determined by BluWave for their innovative practices in:*

Proactive Due Diligence Practices
Transformative Value Creation
Progressive Private Equity Firm Operations
ESG

As part of our awards, we recognized MiddleGround Capital as the 2022 PE Innovator of the Year due to their differential achievements across the above categories. MiddleGround makes control equity investments in B2B industrial and specialty distribution businesses. The firm was founded by John Stewart, Lauren Mulholland, and Scot Duncan in 2018. MiddleGround partners with small and mid-sized businesses, providing extensive operational resources to help them build and grow. The firm is a signatory to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, which provides a framework for investing responsibly and integrating ESG practices into investment practices.

Learn more about why MiddleGround was selected for this top award as well as their approaches to due diligence, value creation, pe firm operations, and ESG in the video below.

View the full list of awardees here.

*BluWave, LP has not received investment capital from and holds no ownership interest in the PE firms evaluated or recognized under the Top 50 PE Innovator awards program. BluWave received no compensation from any of the PE firms in connection with this awards program. However, BluWave may otherwise provide services to the PE firms and/or portfolio companies, but BluWave confirms that its assessment of the PE firms was independent of any such service arrangements. Top 1% in the PE industry is based on BluWave’s review of the more than 5,000 PE firms in the U.S. and Canada from which 50 PE firms were selected as award recipients.

Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards | 2022

March 23, 2022 Delaney Walker

We are pleased to announce the inaugural 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards, an award recognizing firms that represent the top 1% in the private equity industry as determined by BluWave for their innovative practices in:*

Proactive Due Diligence Practices
Transformative Value Creation
Progressive Private Equity Firm Operations
ESG

The BluWave Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Award recipients were selected based upon a rigorous assessment in consultation with leading limited partners, investment bankers and other thought leaders in the private equity ecosystem. Partnering with more than 500 leading private equity firms, we have a unique perspective that enables us to understand best practices and innovation in the private equity industry.

“Private equity is a driving force in the economy, supporting the growth and development of virtually every type of business and providing more than 11 million jobs in America,” says Sean Mooney, Founder and CEO, BluWave. “We congratulate these top 50 private equity firms that are taking uniquely innovative approaches to building businesses and creating sustainable value for a wide range of stakeholders.”

BluWave also recognizes Lexington, Kentucky headquartered MiddleGround Capital with the Innovator of the Year Award due to the company’s achievements across due diligence, value creation, PE firm operations, and ESG. MiddleGround makes control equity investments in B2B industrial and specialty distribution businesses. The firm was founded by John Stewart, Lauren Mulholland, and Scot Duncan in 2018. MiddleGround partners with small and mid-sized businesses, providing extensive operational resources to help them build and grow. The firm is a signatory to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, which provides a framework for investing responsibly and integrating ESG practices into investment practices.

You can discover further information on the BluWave 2022 Top 50 Private Equity Innovator Awards, including the selection process, selection criteria, and recipients, here.

Immediate Interim CTO To Remediate Portco’s Tech Stack

Recent healthcare TPA acquisition needs interim CTO

A PE firm VP came to us with an immediate need for an interim CTO for their recent healthcare TPA acquisition. Having recently closed on the portco, they were looking for an individual that could help them remediate and roadmap the company’s tech stack. They urgently needed an individual that could modernize the tech stack and focus on cyber remediation so that the PE firm could then move forward with other value creation plans at the portco. They were in need of someone with coding skills, experience working with TPAs, experience working under HIPPA compliance, and availability to work on site.

Using pre-vetted network, BluWave identified interim CTO’s that met the exact needs of the firm

Leveraging our founder’s 20 years in private equity, we have extensive frameworks for assessing PE-grade interim CTO needs. BluWave utilizes technology, data, and human ingenuity to pre-map, assess, monitor, and maintain deep pools of interim CTOs that uniquely meet the private equity standard. We interviewed the PE firm to understand their specific key criteria and then identified three select pre-vetted interim CTOs from our invitation-only Intelligent Marketplace that fit their exact needs.

PE firm connected to exact-fit interim CTO for the portco

Within 24 hours of the initial scoping call, the PE firm was introduced to the first identified exact-fit interim CTO for their needs. After being presented with the select few options, the client selected their ideal choice. The PE firm was able to confidently engage the individual who immediately began road mapping and remediating the portco’s tech stack, allowing the PE firm to quickly move forward with further value creation plans.

In The Know: Interim Executives

March 11, 2022 Delaney Walker

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.

February 2022 Roundup: BluWave Client Insights

March 2, 2022 Delaney Walker

Check out the latest, curated collection of reports, insights, and musings from a handful of our PE fund clients on everything AIOps, cybersecurity, 2021’s deal frenzy, and data.

Advent shares why they are excited by businesses in the digital innovation industry and goes into detail about their BigPanda platform, why it is a disruptor in the AIOps market, and how it is sustaining the digital lifeline.

Read the blog >>>

Cybersecurity threats are always increasing in today’s business landscape and the leader of Blackstone’s Portfolio Cybersecurity team, Adam Mattina, shares five approaches you can take to build more resilient companies as it comes to cybersecurity – including knowing your footprint and identifying your lineup of outside experts.

Learn more >>>

Brad Armstrong, Partner at Lovell Minnick Partners, speaks to the deal frenzy that was 2021, what the expectations are for M&A activity in 2022, and why the outlook remains positive.

Crucial ERP selection & implementation consultant to integrate disjointed systems at portco

Large Cap firm needs ERP consultant with industry expertise

A VP at a Large Cap firm came to us with a critical need for an ERP consultant for one of their portcos. Since the acquisition, the PE firm knew that the company’s disjointed tech stack would need to be integrated. The portco CFO’s role specifically was lacking efficiency due to the lack of integration between systems, so the firm urgently needed an ERP consultant with industry experience that could help select and implement the new system. Knowing how critical this project was to advancing the portco CFO’s performance, he was quickly looped in as the decisionmaker.

BluWave identifies pre-vetted, specialized providers

Leveraging our founder’s 20 years in private equity, we have extensive frameworks for assessing PE-grade ERP selection & implementation needs. BluWave utilizes technology, data, and human ingenuity to pre-map, assess, monitor, and maintain deep pools of ERP consultants that uniquely meet the private equity standard. We interviewed the PE firm and portco CFO to understand their specific key criteria and then introduced them to three select pre-vetted firms that specialized in ERP selection & implementation from our invitation-only Intelligent Network that fit their exact needs.

Firm engaged ideal choice to select and implement an ERP

Within 24 hours of the initial scoping call, the PE firm was presented and introduced to the three select firms. All firms not only had a deep knowledge of ERPs but also had specialized experience in selecting and implementing ERPs for businesses in the construction industry. The portco CFO had follow-up calls with each of the firms in order to make a final decision and selected their ideal choice. They got started right away on successfully selecting and implementing an ERP for the portfolio company.

PE VP Forum Recap | February 2022

February 21, 2022 Kyle Johnson

Every quarter we gather Vice Presidents in PE to discuss current industry topics and to offer these peers the chance to gather, share information, and decompress with one another. In our most recent event, we discussed many topics and have listed our top takeaways below.

These forums are invite-only and follow Chatham House Rules, so listed below are high-level takeaways only. Are you in private equity and interested in joining fellow PE VPs during our next PE VP Forum? Register here.

Firm Differentiation: Both fund-raising and then deploying capital are increasingly pressurized in 2022. Business owners and LPs are trying to differentiate between approaching PE firms. It’s important to LPs and owners (especially founders) that you and your firm are doing something “different”- either from a track record or industry knowledge perspective. Some firms are leaning into well-defined theses with continued pressure testing, and many are complementing this with additional operational or advisory resources. Firms can make deeper connections with owners by relying on the experience of operating partners or senior advisors who have true industry experience. Show that you as an investor know where businesses have been, where they are growing, and how you can help them reach potential.
Deal Sourcing: When it comes to identifying potential assets for acquisition, firms are approaching this task in different ways. Some are sticking strictly to investment theses and related lists of companies, then ticking down these lists. Others are leaning heavily into the connections of their LPs and Partners. Not only does this make networking with business owners easier, but deal teams can move quickly once they have exclusivity due to their existing knowledge of the vertical. Focus on geography worked to the advantage of some firms during the pandemic, and firms are finding it easier to build a relationship with business owners who are local to them. Whether this means more in-person meetings or simply the connection between people from a similar area, it’s driving meaningful deal flow.
Developing and attracting junior talent: How to get junior talent in the door? If your firm is based in a smaller or more regional city (St Louis, Detroit, Nashville), stay in touch with those who are local to the area but may be working in banks along the coast. Many were interested in returning “home” during the pandemic. Other firms are cultivating relationships with local investment banks and hosting happy hours to meet with potential associate talent, thus creating a local pipeline to source junior talent. Some firms are looking beyond strict modeling skills (which can be taught), and leaning more into prioritizing soft skills and executive presence. Once these hires are made it’s important to get them involved in workstreams that make them feel like they’re contributing to firm initiatives. Culture is key, which is becoming easier as people return to the office.

We thoroughly enjoyed getting to gather with PE VPs to discuss these current industry hot topics. We’s be happy to connect you to the PE-grade, exact-fit, third-party resources to assist you in this tight market, just contact us here.

Learn more about how we can specifically help Deal Quarterbacks and access a toolkit that can help you do your job more efficiently here.

Sean Mooney on The Private Equity Podcast

February 18, 2022 Delaney Walker

Recently, BluWave founder & CEO, Sean Mooney, spoke with Alex Rawlings on The Private Equity Podcast about how PE firms and their portfolio companies can develop better communication and therefore better relationships. They discussed common mistakes by PE firms and portcos, how PE investors can better connect with portcos, how to select the best service providers, and more. They also discussed insights into the private equity industry and what Sean misses from his PE partner days.

Interested in listening to the whole podcast yourself? Click below.

Check out some of the other podcasts Sean has shared his wisdom on, including Private Equity Funcast, Growth Think Tank, & Middle Market Musings.

If we can help you be successful by quickly connecting you to the PE-grade, pre-vetted, third parties you need, give us a shout.