Private and Public Companies - Page 18 of 18

COVID-19 According to BluWave Network Experts

March 11, 2020 Sean Mooney

On Thursday, March 5, 2020, we hosted a COVID-19 Intel Session for our PE fund stakeholders featuring leading experts from healthcare, government, and supply chain risks. For those who missed it, or perhaps aren’t officially part of our network yet, we wanted to provide the key takeaways on this important and rapidly-evolving topic.

As you likely know, COVID-19 is highly contagious, but the fatality rate is likely to be far lower than currently reported figures that use confirmed cases as a denominator. The high transmissibility is causing governments and businesses across the globe to limit movement of people and goods. This limitation of movement is causing disruptions in supply chains, which in turn is affecting global business performance. Measures can and should be taken going forward to limit risks within your businesses.

Here’s what you should know…

HEALTHCARE
According to Dr. Jeff Runge, President of Biologue, former CMO of DHS:

As of March 5th, out of the nearly 100k cases reported, fewer than 200 are in the U.S., but that number will continue to rise in the coming weeks. [NB, as of March 10th, total and US cases were 118k and ~800, respectively].
The virus is highly contagious, about twice that of seasonal flu but less than SARS-2003. The highest risk of death is in people over 60 or those with coexisting chronic medical conditions or with high or prolonged exposure to the virus. Children are less affected, based on the Chinese experience.
For this virus, we don’t have vaccines or therapeutics, so public health prevention measures are the only countermeasures we have. Washing hands after any possible contact with a contagion, wiping down surfaces, and avoiding contact with other people and animals when you’re sick.
The good news is that with isolation of the sick, social distancing, and good personal and environmental hygiene, it possible to reduce the number of people who will become infected by someone sick with coronavirus. The likelihood of infecting others is referred to as a reproductive ratio (R0). A disease with an R0 above a 2 will sustain an epidemic. Based on a study of the first 425 COVID-19 patients in China, the estimated R0 of COVID-19 was 2.2. The goal is to implement public health prevention measures such that the R0 will be less than 1.0, in which case the epidemic will die out on its own.
Every company should have explicit plans and policies in place to limit unnecessary travel and attending large work gatherings, no travel if employees are sick, with international travel being more risky than short domestic flights so far, to prevent sick workers from coming to the office, and apply permissive use of remote work.

GOVERNMENT
According to Aaron Roth, Managing Director of Chertoff Group:

Be mindful of source information. The government and academia are providing good information. Similarly, the mainstream media is generally providing good information, but be cautious of social media and non-authoritative sources.
There are capacity constraints with medical supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers. This will continue to be a government focus area.
Perhaps less obvious, companies and employees need to also be thinking about cybersecurity. Working remotely introduces a higher risk level of cyberattacks. Bad actors will likely take advantage of this, so beware of anything that comes across the screen that says “Coronavirus” or “COVID-19,” etc. Be extra vigilant to cyber risks during this time.
As this situation evolves, we should expect the government to institute additional international travel restrictions and we will likely see increased screening at airports if the outbreak persists. Companies must continue analyzing their business risk as it relates to international travel and their overseas operations.
The Federal government will play a meaningful role in providing guidance and resources, but treatment/containment will occur at the local level and likely vary from State to State and city to city. You need to understand your risks by location. Your businesses should be in contact with their local authorities and local healthcare providers so they are best positioned for the coming months.
Each of your businesses should have a business continuity plan with designated leaders.

SUPPLY CHAIN
According to Allison Wood, Associate Director at Control Risks:

Beyond the impact on tourism, airline industry, and other travel-related businesses, COVID-19 has put a huge burden on companies with a heavy reliance on China for the supply chain: consumer products, industrial goods, auto, etc.
Right now, most businesses in China are not operating fully. Labor is not at full capacity; only 66% of surveyed employees have returned to work. We think the situation will improve; but we still expect disruptions for weeks and months in areas of cross-country road support and shipping.
Every company needs to map their supplier networks. Suppliers in China particularly need to be actively monitored and communicated with. Critical suppliers anywhere in the world need to also be closely monitored as they may be impacted by their own suppliers and other virus-related disruptions may be coming their way.
Our economic partners are estimating a noteworthy decline in global economic performance due to COVID-19. Based on what we see now, global growth could slow from 2.5% to 2.3%, China could slow from 6% to 4.8%, and the U.S. could slow to 1.3%, the lowest growth rate since the Great Recession.

INFORMATION RESOURCES

Our panelists recommend that you monitor the following sources to keep up with the latest.

Bottom line: With some prudence, proactivity, planning, and a keen understanding of the risks, companies can lessen the impact of COVID-19 both at work and at home.

For further information or assistance with your companies, please reach out to any member of the BluWave team or send an email to info@BluWave.net.

Why Your Company Needs a Fully Realized Digital Marketing Strategy

July 17, 2018 Sean Mooney

As a player in the private equity space, you know the struggles of growing a company under tight deadlines and budgets. While you may think that digital marketing is better suited for “the other guys,” e.g. B2C firms, larger companies, groups targeting millennials, this isn’t the case. Middle market businesses across verticals can harness the power of digital marketing for business growth.

Digital marketing is one of the most underused tools in the toolbox. By not implementing these methods and realizing how important a digital marketing strategy is, your leadership teams are leaving money on the table.

Here are a few things you should know:

Per McKinsey, companies with strong B2B digital marketing plans/brands see 20% increased performance
Per CEB, B2B buyers are now nearly 70% through their buying process before contacting a provider
Per Google, B2B buyers are typically willing to consider two options by the time they engage a potential provider

Marketing now plays a much more important role in your selling process.

Digital Marketing is More Affordable Than You Think
Despite the number of acronyms thrown around and the ever-changing stream of marketing platforms, executing against a digital marketing plan is more attainable than many lower middle-market and middle-market firms may expect.

You don’t need high-end, expensive software: there are now a number of powerful, simple to use, and cost-effective tools available.

You can also start by renting a fully capable digital marketing team before investing in an internal one or simply outsource certain roles to augment your existing team’s efforts.

Implementing a multi-dimensional digital marketing strategy may seem like it will stretch your company’s already tight budget, but overspending on a digital marketing budget isn’t necessary. Working with a marketing services agency instead of hiring internal staff gives you the resources you need at a price that makes sense for the bottom line.

Key Elements of your Digital Marketing Demand Generation Plan
Once your company is ready to work with an agency, here are a few items they should concentrate on to gain the benefits of digital marketing:

Data – It’s hard to do digital marketing effectively without good data. Make sure you have it and treat data as a resource that needs to be invested in and maintained like any other asset in your business. B2C data can be relatively robust over time, but B2B data degrades at about 5% per month.
Content — Bottom line: your company needs to attract potential customers to its website. Quality content, including blog posts, infographics, and other well-written ad engaging copy can help increase credibility and your position within your industry while intriguing prospects, causing them to stay on your site for longer periods of time, and reach out to you for more information. Make this content targeted: Per Hubspot, 96% of B2B buyers want content targeted to their own industry.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — Many people think SEO is cost-prohibitive, but it doesn’t have to be. A technical SEO expert, combined with in-depth content, can effectively raise a website’s ranking in a short time with minimal cost.
Social Media — For a company looking to increase their visibility, social media is key. For B2C companies, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram help your company connect with customers and prospects. Social media is also becoming critical for B2B customers who are finding their customers in both traditional social platforms as well as business focused platforms like LinkedIn. There are also a variety of analytics from these platforms to demonstrably show how your firm is performing, both over time and against competitors.
Paid Search Marketing — While there is a financial barrier to paid search, your portco doesn’t need a huge budget to be successful. Even small companies utilizing well-targeted campaigns with the right keyword strategy can yield powerful results that pay for themselves.
Email – Most companies already do email marketing in one form or another. It’s the easiest way to get started. You shouldn’t do email alone, though, as its increasingly hard to get through the noise in the inbox. Use this tactic in concert with all of the approaches above and you’ll see profound results.

A fully-realized digital marketing strategy is a key step in your company’s continued development. Once a marketing plan and the resources are in place, you should set clear goals and expectations for growth with your internal and external teams and hold them accountable.

Ensure Your Portfolio Companies Have the Resources They Need
Don’t let your company’s digital-fueled growth stagnate or never get off the ground. Your portfolio company can get started quickly by leveraging the skills of a top outsourced agency that has the functional capabilities you need, the industry experience you require, and the budget you have.

Rent 10% of a bunch of A’s versus owning 100% of the B or C capabilities your budget will support: you’ll get better results and save time, money, and the struggle of hiring for a specific set of scarce skills.

Finding the right resources should never be a barrier to success. Learn more about how we help your portfolio company build value by working with PE-tested expert service providers.

3 Ways to Increase Your Company’s Value

June 6, 2018 Sean Mooney

After nearly 20 years in private equity, I appreciate how hard it is to build and grow businesses in a constrained environment. Nothing is easy, but most things are possible with the right people and resources.

Top private equity funds regularly ask us about ideas to help drive growth and reduce costs. Here are a few growth, organizational development, and cost reduction strategies that can be applied to build your business and drive value creation:

Reach 1,000s of customers at a click of a button: Digital marketing is the most underused tool in the middle market: every business should be doing at least the basics (particularly in underutilized B2B markets). This starts with good data (you should think of this as a business asset), requires market segmented content, and systems capabilities. It’s really hard, and expensive, to internally be good across SEO, paid search, content, email, PPC ads, etc. You should outsource this to a middle market agency who will do this better and at lower cost than you can. Committed digital marketing programs can lift revenues by more than 20%.

Rent “A” Players: Sometimes it’s better to rent 10% of a bunch of A’s rather than own 100% of the B or C you can afford in your budget: the future of work is now (just ask some of the best younger workforce members who won’t work full time). There are great variable resources that you can use across the functional areas of your organization to more optimally inform strategies and execute on your plans. Use them. Plus, if it is a one-time project, you often can get an add-back for it, enabling you to present stronger numbers when it comes time to sell your business.

Your costs are rising, you should be fighting it more: In the current world climate, all sorts of input costs are on the rise, from metal to plastics to fuel. Most companies (including very large ones), don’t have the internal expertise or the free resources to understand and aggressively combat today’s volatility. Bring in a specialized procurement group that lives and breathes in these markets to reduce costs, diversify supply chains, and/or hedge risks. While you’re at it, go after your indirect spend. If you’re not ready for a procurement group, at the very least you should be using plug and play Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs). Expect some push back as the savings can be embarrassing and/or preemptively tap into rainy day savings buckets. However, when you apply a valuation multiple to the savings you’ll achieve, these tools are no-brainers.

Finding the superior groups isn’t easy. BluWave seamlessly connects you with the best vetted and private equity tested practitioners that specialize in your areas of need and fit your budget. We also make it remarkably easy on you: we don’t charge you anything to use our service.

Start talking with us about your needs today. Help is a call or email away.

How You Should Be Selecting the Right Service Providers

April 10, 2018 Sean Mooney

When used correctly, service providers can meaningfully improve the efficiency and productivity of your business and can dramatically help increase value. In a perfect world, your service providers work autonomously and efficiently to make universal improvements to your business.

But that’s not often the case. Service providers not only need the right capabilities, but also ongoing guidance to perform their tasks to maximum effect.

When done well, choosing and using the right service provider can profoundly impact due diligence and value creation.

Unfortunately, you’ve probably been doing it wrong.

We don’t mean it as an insult – it’s a common occurrence. There are so many service providers who simply aren’t the right fit for improving your business and increasing its value. Private equity (PE) funds, their portfolio companies, and independent companies need to critically examine service providers before hiring them, then carefully manage them to meet with success.

But how do you take that first step toward finding and choosing the right service provider? You learn about the problems or opportunities in the process, scope your needs, then purposefully move forward with the solutions.

The Fragmented and Fluid World of Service Providers
There are two ubiquitous problems when searching for and using service providers:

It’s hard to know who is really good for the task at hand – No matter the industry, finding and vetting a qualified service provider is exponentially harder than finding just any service provider, and it’s going to take some time to get it right.
Once you find out who can deliver, they change – Even the most well-qualified and experienced service provider is vulnerable to change; they may move upmarket, ask for higher fees, get acquired and clean house, or sell out of capacity right when you need them.

The service provider ecosystem is a complex web. Within this web are great groups that can help you accelerate business growth and development. But to achieve your goals, you have to accept no less than a grade-A fit for your business.

Calibrating Service Providers Around Capabilities
There are three essential baseline questions to ask about service providers when assessing:

Do they do what I need? (Capability)
Have they worked in this industry before? (Expertise)
Can I afford them? (Budget)

If the answer to any of those questions is “no,” then you haven’t found the right fit. It’s essential to make sure the answer is “yes” before proceeding.

Capability
Dig around to find out if the service provider has done and has success with doing the job for which you plan to hire them – and be specific. Learn if they have handled tasks that match or closely match those that you expect them to handle, and get two sides of the story; ask them about their experience, and learn about the real-world result of that experience by speaking with their past and current customers of your choosing.

Expertise
It may not seem terribly important initially, but industry expertise helps your service provider skip many steps in the learning process (and avoids the expensive proposition of a service provider having to learn while they’re on the clock for you). The ability to tailor decision-making to the needs of a particular industry is invaluable, and you’ll need both the set of skills necessary to do so and the time and resources it would have taken to gain those skills.

Budget
Calibrate your budget with your choice of service provider. There are different service providers that are capable of executing well at different price points. Beware of pushing a service provider at a higher price point to do work much below their typical rates as you’ll likely get sub-par focus and attention. Instead, choose the best in class provider within your price range. While there are of course tradeoffs that will be made between such price points, with a reasonable budget, you should be able to get and should expect an excellent outcome.

Getting a great result starts with answering “yes” to all 3 baseline questions around Capability, Expertise, and Budget. Accept no substitutes.

Managing Your Service Providers
Service providers need real-time management if you want to get a great return on your investment. Try these tips for getting the most out of your service provider

Create a system of consequences – Holding providers accountable means making sure they know what is expected of them and that their actions have a direct effect on your and their companies. You should track how they are performing over time, provide direct feedback, and only work with groups that consistently serve you and your peers well over time.
Manage them like a full-time equivalent (FTE) – It’s okay to check up on your service providers to ensure they are working diligently. Maintain reporting lines, communicate regularly, and treat them with mutual respect as you would a full-time employee.
Work as if they are part of the same company – Consider your outsourced service provider as another hire or set of hires that are in charge of a selection of your business’ process Keep them informed on issues they need to know about and include them as part of your company work ethic and culture.

When you trust a service provider, they should also be able to trust you to help guide them toward the tasks necessary to meet your goals. Related to guidance, there are two common mistakes that many PE funds, portfolio companies, and independent companies make when choosing and working with service providers:

Broad mandates – If you’re not specific about what you want, service providers have to guess both your goals and how you would like tasks to be executed, which can lead to quite a bit of wasted time and money.
Poor management – We can’t say this enough; service providers need to be actively managed as if they were employees of the company to truly shine

Growth and development is never a guarantee, but by carefully selecting your service providers, giving clear guidance, and holding them accountable, you will drive value creation with more speed and certainty.

Sound like a lot of work? We think so, too –we’re uniquely equipped and excited to handle much of this for you. BluWave team members utilize our extensive PE-tested network of comprehensively qualified service providers to analyze and help select the perfect fit for growing your companies. We then hold them accountable for delivering excellent results for all of our private equity fund, portfolio company, and independent company customers. Contact us today for help with finding the best fit for your next service provider needs.