How has the current economic situation – i.e. the 2023 bank collapses – affected collaboration between operating partners, portfolio support and deal teams? What are private equity firms’ latest technology best practices around data & analytics, cybersecurity and AI?
These were the hot topics in the latest BluWave-hosted PE Operating Partners’ forum March 21.
Centralized data in business analytics involves consolidating information from across an organization into a single system for easier analysis.
“This aspect of business intelligence and analytics is important because it gives companies visibility into KPIs at a high level,” says Brandon John, BluWave’s Service Provider Relationship Manager.
The consolidation usually happens in something called a data warehouse.
Business intelligence practices like centralization are becoming more and more important to businesses, whether that mean private equity, portcos or private and public companies.
According to our most recent quarterly report, we saw “broad-scale adoption of data quality and visualization endeavors and emergent efforts in higher level analytics and AI.”
Let’s take a closer look at what data centralization can do for your business.
Centralized data provides a single source of truth so leadership can make faster, more accurate business decisions.
Early Detection of Issues
Centralized data allows businesses to identify problems sooner before they become bigger issues.
More Consistency
Different departments often have the same definitions and metrics for things like active users and sales. By centralizing data, you can eliminate confusion at the leadership level.
Holistic View of Customer Journey
Centralized data from marketing, sales and customer service systems provide a complete picture of the customer experience.
Advanced Capabilities
It is easier to analyze data and find insights when all of the relevant data is in one place. Businesses can more easily see correlations across different data sets.
Increased Efficiency
Employees don’t have to spend time aggregating data from different systems. Everything is available in a single source.
Improved Trust
There is confidence that the data and reports are accurate and consistent since there is only one version of the truth.
Digital transformation is no longer something only the biggest, wealthiest companies can afford.
Not only are these services within reach for businesses of all sizes – from enterprise organizations to lower middle market companies – but they’re also essential.
Learn about common improvement areas all businesses can implement to accelerate digital transformation efforts.
Business leaders, including operations partners at private equity firms, C-level executives and functional leads are evaluating the digital capabilities and infrastructure in their companies to identify areas for improvement
Simple improvements to workflows or procedures can significantly trim manual tasks and optimize human capital during economic uncertainty
“No-regret” moves such as the following can accelerate change in a targeted, cost-effective way:
Adopting cloud and SaaS solutions
Improving cybersecurity
Enhancing website capabilities with tools like chatbots
Automating order processing and inventory management
How do you identify top C-suite talent? And what’s the best way to improve culture and retention for existing employees?
These were among the most popular topics in the latest BluWave-hosted Human Capital forum March 9.
Megan Ryan Kanefsky of J.F. Lehman & Company, Kristin Brown Patrick of New State Capital Partners and Abby Wilson of Transom Capital Group joined our own Rena Frackt Zimmerman as panelists for the virtual event.
The panelists discussed the importance of creating scorecard assessments for all executive positions to test technical aptitude.
Incorporating objective criteria, such as personality assessments, can also be helpful. For example, when hiring a CFO, the process might involve screening for cultural fit, sending an assessment that models financial statements with errors and conducting behavioral interviews with key stakeholders.
To ensure success, it’s essential to communicate effectively with candidates and get alignment on what you’re looking for from the onset. Putting in the work upfront can help build a high-performing executive team that drives company growth and success.
Hiring deeper within the organization – beyond the C-suite – also came up. The panelists said that one important aspect of the hiring process is using data to evaluate talent.
Objective criteria like cognitive abilities and behavioral fit for the role can help companies focus on hiring for aptitude and growth potential rather than just credentials. Encouraging a mindset of thinking outside the box can also help identify junior talent with a strong aptitude to learn and grow.
While it may take longer to find smarter and better hires, these candidates are more likely to stay and contribute to the growth and success of the company.
Improving Retention and Culture
Creating a positive and engaging work culture – vital to retaining top talent – was the third and final topic the panelists discussed.
One way to encourage employee buy-in and create a sense of ownership is to offer profit interests to all employees, not just top executives. This can motivate team members as they feel invested in the success of the company. Leadership programs for middle managers and director-level employees can also have a significant impact on retention rates.
Regular standing events create a sense of loyalty to the organization, too. For example, weekly lunches or bi-weekly events can encourage collaboration and give different levels of the organization opportunities to interact. This can foster a sense of community and help create a more positive work environment.
Simple acts of recognition and gratitude can also go a long way toward building a more positive culture, the panelists said.
Pricing consultants help businesses maximize profits based on researching trends, competitors, customer behavior and more. The goal is to maintain high demand and revenue generation without sacrificing quality, loyalty or perception.
Setting the right price for a product or service is a key factor in maximizing profit margin. It can unlock substantial additional revenue when done correctly.
In fact, demand for pricing strategy resources continues to increase in this high-inflation economy. It’s often among the most-sought resources in the BluWave network.
If you want to hire a pricing expert, here’s what you should look for during your evaluation.
How consultants set prices depends on many factors, such as the type of product or service, market conditions, customer segments and business goals. That’s why it’s so important to hire someone who will take the time to intimately understand your organization and its competitors.
By choosing the “right price,” these consultants help maximize a business’s ROI by protecting profit margins while maximizing revenue and demand.
Pricing consultants may use a number of different high-level strategies: cost-plus pricing; value-based pricing; dynamic pricing; promotional pricing; penetration pricing; skimming pricing.
Pricing, however, is not a one-time exercise. They must be constantly assessed and adjusted based on performance. Consultants work closely with their clients to understand their objectives and constraints and develop a pricing strategy that supports them.
They help businesses choose the “right price” that aligns with the overall business strategy, marketing plan and sales goals to achieve maximum ROI.
When choosing a pricing consultant, finding someone who thoroughly researches the market before making recommendations is essential. Pricing consultants use various methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, experiments, data analysis, and more to gain customer and market insights. This establishes a solid foundation for an effective strategy.
In addition to customer and market insights, pricing consultants also consider production, distribution and other operational costs to develop a strategy that ensures profitability.
Pricing consultants also analyze competitors’ strategies to identify opportunities and potential threats. This analysis includes not only their product or service prices, but also their promotions, discounts and other tactics.
To measure price sensitivity, consultants may use techniques such as conjoint analysis or price elasticity testing. This helps them determine how price changes may affect customer demand. They also use digital tools such as web analytics, social listening and sentiment analysis to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences.
All this market research can help validate a new product or service, identify customer value drivers, measure price sensitivity, segment customers by willingness to pay, benchmark competitors’ prices and more.
After conducting market research and analyzing customer insights, pricing consultants typically use a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to create a pricing strategy that meets their clients’ goals. This includes:
Segmenting customers: Based on their willingness to pay, customer segments are created to help determine the optimal pricing strategy. This involves identifying the different types of customers, their preferences and their willingness to pay for a particular product or service.
Identifying value drivers: Consultants work with their clients to identify the key value drivers for their products or services. This involves understanding what features or benefits are most important to customers and how they affect their willingness to pay.
Developing pricing structures: After identifying customer segments and value drivers, consultants develop pricing structures that align with their clients’ business goals. This may involve creating different pricing tiers or packages that offer different levels of benefits or features.
Conducting sensitivity analysis: For an optimal pricing strategy, consultants conduct sensitivity analysis to understand how changes in pricing may affect demand and revenue.
Developing measurement tools: Pricing consultants also develop measurement tools to monitor the performance of the pricing strategy over time. This includes setting up metrics and analytics to track sales, revenue, profit margins and customer satisfaction.
By using a combination of market research, quantitative analysis, and pricing strategies, pricing consultants help businesses maximize ROI and growth.
To better understand customer behavior and preferences, pricing consultants use a range of techniques to gather insights:
Key decision factors: One of the first steps in understanding a customer base is defining what motivates them. This involves identifying the main drivers of customer behavior, such as price, quality, brand reputation or convenience. Research techniques such as surveys, focus groups and data analysis can all be used to understand what influences purchasing decisions.
Willingness to pay: This concept helps businesses determine the optimal price point for their products or services. Essentially, willingness to pay is a measure of how much customers are willing to spend on a particular product or service based on factors such as perceived value, quality and market competition.
Preferences: Customer needs vary from market to market. For example, pricing consultants may work to reduce churn for a SaaS organization by understanding customers’ needs, what they value and how they make choices. Success is measured by an increase in adoption and revenue.
Offer options: Offering choices with good-better-best options and bundles that meet varying needs, use cases and budgets can reveal a lot about a customer. KPIs here include customer adoption and employing Give-Gets to protect price/value alignment.
Perception of discounts: It’s also important to understand how customers perceive discounts and how they influence purchasing decisions. This information is also used to inform pricing strategies that maximize revenue while maintaining loyalty.
A pricing expert will know when and how to use each of these tactics to develop the deepest understanding of the customer base for your particular industry.
Some businesses never realize the potential of their products or services because they’re not charging the right price.
By blindly setting prices without conducting proper diligence, you’re leaving money on the table. Depending on the size of your business, this could mean millions of dollars.
Fortunately, there’s a roster of expertly vetted price consultants ready for you to hire from within the BluWave Business Builders’ Network.
We have thoroughly evaluated each and every pricing resource that’s been invited into our network so that you can move forward with confidence. These niche-specific resources have invaluable experience helping companies like yours optimize prices.
Whether you’re a PE firm working with a portco, or a private or public company that wants to accelerate revenue growth, we already have the right service provider for you.
Service Provider Type: Interim Executive with Manufacturing Expertise
Industry: Manufacturing – Glass
Need
Interim CEO
Struggling to get the right CEO in place for its portco, the PE firm needed a stopgap while it prepared an internal candidate to take over as its long-term chief executive officer.
Challenge
Underperforming Portco
A glass company with a great product line couldn’t keep up with consumer demand. After years of underperformance throughout the holding period, the PE firm was underwater on its investment. Having broken covenants with its bank while battling labor and equipment issues, the team was desperate for a quick turnaround.
They identified a strong internal candidate to take over in the long run, but he needed some guidance to grow into the role. To help him get up to speed, they needed an interim CEO who could serve as a mentor while refining operations at multiple plants across the U.S.
How BluWave Helped
The Business Builders’ Network
The BluWave Vetted™ Business Builders’ Network features a deep bench of hand-selected interim executives, ready to step into a new role on short notice. We immediately contacted the best and brightest leadership talent in the manufacturing industry from within our network and presented a short list of candidates that same week.
The team’s top choice was identified just one day after the initial scoping call, and the interim CEO stepped into the role shortly after. We maintained contact with both the temporary executive as well as the PE firm throughout the entire engagement – and beyond – to ensure the relationship was fruitful.
Result
The veteran executive righted the ship during a six-month stint, buying the PE firm time to name a full-time CEO
The career interim executive hit the ground running and brought stability to the portco. In the meantime, the private equity firm identified and groomed its permanent replacement from within.
The interim executive we provided from our PE-grade network stepped in and mentored the presumptive leader to prepare them to take the reins. At the end of the six-month engagement, the transition was complete and the full-time CEO remains in place to this day as the company continues to grow. Now the PE firm can focus on winding down its holding period and preparing the manufacturing company for sale.
Companies conduct voice of customer (VoC) studies to better understand how people interact with their product or service.
While there are many techniques to gather this information, the objective is largely the same: Ensure the customer is being heard and served as best as possible.
Private equity firms, portfolio companies, and private and public companies can all benefit from a strong voice of customer framework.
“Voice of the customer is extremely important to businesses because it allows companies to have visibility into where they are performing highly and where they are not,” says Brandon John, BluWave’s service provider relationship manager. “By hearing exactly how their customers feel about their brand, they can allocate the appropriate resources to improve some identified areas.”
Let’s talk about some of the advantages organizations can gain with the information gathered in VoC research.
Benefits of VoC
There are several advantages to conducting a voice-of-customer survey. It come as no surprise, then, that it’s been top-of-mind for our clients for years.
“VoC projects are always going to be something PE firms prioritize with their portcos,” John says. “We receive steady demand in this space and have since BluWave was founded.”
Rather than merely gathering feedback, VoC research helps companies reimagine their products and services to surpass customers’ needs by gaining an intricate understanding of who they are and what they want.
This includes how and when they use the product, as well as why they’re more (or less) likely to choose it over a competitor.
Listening to customers and resolving their concerns establishes trust and loyalty, decreasing attrition and boosting customer lifetime value.
A client is more likely to stick with a brand that it feels has its best interests in mind.
Better Business Decisions
Actionable insights gleaned from customer input can steer key business choices around product roadmaps, marketing campaigns, pricing strategies and service models.
Increased Bottom Line
An unparalleled customer experience not only spurs growth, but also a competitive edge. One study showed that companies with strong VoC programs boast 10X more annual revenue growth.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
Catering to customers’ needs and wants forges lasting connections. It not only enhances the existing customer experience, but makes it more likely to acquire new ones as you get a better grasp on your target market.
This can have a compound effect as a happy customer is also more likely to recommend your brand or service to friends, families, colleagues and industry peers.
Employee Retention
This might come as a surprise, but your own employees can also benefit from VoC studies. That’s because it gives them a stronger connection to the customer by putting themselves in their shoes. The more aligned the employees are with the clients, the more satisfied they tend to be, thus limiting turnover.
To comprehensively capture the opinions of your customers, you should employ multiple avenues for feedback, including surveys, social media, reviews, emails and phone calls.
By using a variety of channels to gather input, companies can gain a multifaceted understanding of client needs and desires that fuels business decisions, improved experiences and financial gains.
Choose Timing Wisely
The timing of requests for customer feedback can significantly impact the quality and amount of responses. Businesses should choose a moment that is relevant, convenient and respectful for clients, such as after a purchase, service interaction or milestone.
Businesses that are considerate in their requests for input are more likely to receive thoughtful, actionable responses that can drive key business decisions and improved outcomes.
The best moment to act on feedback received is as soon as possible. While you want to be diligent about understanding and applying what customers tell you, times is of the essence.
This is especially important when it comes to fixing problems, resolving negative feedback and staying ahead of competitors.
Segmentation
To gain business insights, companies should analyze customer feedback and group clients by factors like demographics or habits. Tailoring actions to different groups helps build loyalty and boost revenue.
It also establishes trust, decreases attrition and increases lifetime value by making each experience as tailored as possible.
The quality of your feedback depends largely on the quality of your questions. You should ask clear, concise and specific questions that are easy to understand and answer. You should also avoid leading, biased or ambiguous questions that can skew your results.
The value of customer input hinges greatly on the quality of the questions posed. Aim for clear, crisp and targeted inquiries that are easy to comprehend and respond to. Avoid being suggestive, biased or obscure lines of questioning that can skew results.
Your goal is to learn what customers think about your business, not try to convince them of something.
Acknowledge Feedback
One of the most important VoC best practices is to acknowledge your customers’ feedback and show them that you appreciate their time and opinions. There’s never been more competition for our time, so the fact that someone is willing to participate in your study means they probably have strong feelings.
Follow up with a thank-you message, sharing how their feedback will be used or even offering a reward (see below).
Share Findings Internally
To turn feedback into action, you need to share your findings with the relevant stakeholders in your organization. You should communicate the key insights, recommendations and action plans to your employees, managers and leaders. You should also encourage collaboration and accountability across different teams and departments.
Benchmark Against Your Industry
To measure your performance and progress against your competitors and industry standards, you should benchmark your VoC metrics against external data sources. You can use industry reports, surveys or benchmarks to compare your customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy levels with others in your field.
Test and Optimize
VoC best practices are dynamic, not static. You should constantly refine your program to ensure that it is effective, efficient and aligned with your overall business goals.
This can be done with A/B testing, analytics or feedback loops to evaluate and improve your VoC methods, tools and strategies.
Involve Key Stakeholders
To ensure that your VoC program has the support and resources it needs to succeed, you should involve key stakeholders from the start.
Identify decision-makers, influencers and beneficiaries of your program and engage them in defining the goals, scope and outcomes of your efforts.
Offer Participation Incentives
To increase your response rates and motivate your customers to share their feedback , you can offer participation incentives such as discounts, coupons, freebies or loyalty points.
Choose incentives that are relevant, attractive and proportional to the effort required from your customers.
The expert service providers in the BluWave network know the importance of understanding your customers.
We constantly vet and re-vet the best third-party resources for this exact need, no matter what your customer type or industry.
“We have a solid bench of VoC providers in the BluWave network,” says John, who interacts with these third-party resources on a daily basis. “However, it is important to have the right group, for the right need, at the right time.”
Contact our research and operations team and walk us through your VoC needs. In less than one business day, we’ll introduce you to two or three exact-match options.
“Like all service toolboxes in the BluWave network, the VoC toolbox is always rapidly expanding,” John adds.
Once you make a selection, we’ll hold the service provider accountable from start to finish as they bring their voice of customer expertise to your specific situation.
Business intelligence continues to be among the most high-demand services in the Business Builders’ Network.
One aspect of BI&A that’s popular is automation.
The founding partner of one of our BluWave service providers says BI automation is essential to modernizing data analysis.
“A lot of times the process involves people pulling data into spreadsheets manually, analyzing, cleaning, doing stuff with the data and then giving it to their bosses or whoever downstream needs them,” says the partner, Mike Datus*. “That’s usually a very error-prone process because it’s done by humans.”
Business intelligence automation is the process of consolidating and streamlining your company’s data into a single warehouse that can be accessed in real-time.
Automation provides instantaneous insights that forgo manual input and data manipulation to give team members actionable, consistent information to drive their day-to-day decisions.
Put another way, it helps you automate business processes.
Companies that are older, or perhaps resource-challenged, can benefit greatly from automating their data collection and analysis.
Another data firm’s founding partner, who we’ll call Steve Holms*, puts it this way:
“Holding larger data sets and integrating more data sources to do analysis across several different places makes it a lot easier to analyze.”
It’s no surprise that business intelligence tools are in such high demand. We have seen countless PE firms and other companies streamline processes and improve real-time decision-making because of them.
Here are just a few of the reasons why you should consider implementing or upgrading your automation efforts.
Save Time
Not only will you complete key tasks sooner, but you’ll be able to make important decisions faster, too.
“You’re talking about orders of seconds instead of hours or days, right? And then that’s huge,” Datus says. “With one of our clients, we built a platform, so instead of waiting a week, the CFO now had a live dashboard in board meetings. So when he was asked a question, he didn’t have to say, ‘I’ll get back to you next week.’ He literally just popped up his dashboard, did a quick filter, and had the answer.”
Our service providers often see situations where top executives need different versions of the same report depending on who they’re working with or what meeting they’re in at a given moment.
This often meant one-off iterations of the same data sets that take might not be available the same day, or even week.
“If the analyst has to go back, they have to go back and pull the data again, do the analysis, run it through, right? That’s another runtime,” says Holms, who noted that those iterations add up.
Another time-saving scenario is if an analyst leaves the company, is on vacation or has an emergency. Data analysis doesn’t stop as soon as that key player becomes unavailable.
“You only have to program it once, and you’re done,” Holms says. “It’s all in the database, and they don’t have to email anybody in case they didn’t get the report.”
Have you ever tried to access a report so robust that you thought your computer might break down? You’re not alone.
Another benefit of business intelligence automation is the ability to scale.
“Sometimes your data’s so large, it’s hard for Excel to even open, right?” Holms says. “How does sales correlate with product performance, correlate with manufacturing, correlate with this? —putting it in one place makes things a lot easier to expand.”
Save Money
There are multiple ways BI automation can save your company money:
You may be able to reduce headcount on your analytics team and reinvest those savings elsewhere
The time you do save – as mentioned earlier – is time for which you’re no longer paying
The data itself could unveil inefficiencies in your business that are ripe for improvement
Manual intervention is expensive. By cutting out intermediaries, and empowering decision-makers more quickly, they can use expertise that no program can account for to make impactful decisions
Consistency
Humans are much more error-prone than machines. Especially well-designed and well-programmed machines.
While you wouldn’t want to automate a process so heavily that it’s no longer monitored, the correct calibration can set your team much more at ease.
“You’re building good processes to make sure it’s consistent. It’s done by computers, so once you do it once it’s pretty robust, unless the data itself changes or the business changes,” Holms says. “Sometimes you just get errors that are difficult to detect. And if you want to go back to see what were my numbers last week or two weeks ago or three months ago, you have to go into your email inbox and search for the report.”
With BI automation, you can leave the inbox behind and find everything you need in your dashboard.
“It’s all in the database,” Holms says, “and they don’t have to email anybody in case they didn’t get the report.”
Dynamic Reports
As we already hinted at above, automated dashboards and visualizations are essentially living, breathing databases.
Instead of plugging new information into a spreadsheet every time you want to update a report, it’s available instantaneously. Not only that. Since it’s connected to the source, you don’t have to input the data at all.
“Once you have it all there getting updated predictably, you can create these really rich charts and graphs, because with these tools you can get these visuals that aren’t static,” Datus says. “The real-time dashboards update as the data comes into the system. So if you want to see one chart or the set of 20 charts for last week just for finance, you can click a few things, and you can get that report.”
While automation can be valuable to a business, it doesn’t come without some potential downside. With the right help, though, we believe all of these can be overcome.
Job Loss
Automation may replace human workers and lead to job losses – at least in the short term.
A benefit of this, though, is that it frees those some people up to learn and use new skills that are equally valuable to the business. Money saved on one area of human capital can be reinvested in your talent.
System Failures
Automated systems can experience technical issues, thereby disrupting business operations. You would hope that this is the exception and not the norm, but even so, manual intervention may be required to fix the issues.
Expert service providers, however, are familiar with the most common vulnerabilities, and will know how to not only fix them, but also proactively prevent them.
Automated systems are designed to handle repetitive, routine tasks in a predetermined manner. They may lack the flexibility to adapt to unexpected situations or changes.
This is quickly changing, though, with the implementation of more and more AI tools that can often course-correct much faster than humans.
This perceived “risk” is quickly becoming a moot point in many senses.
Cost
Implementing and maintaining automated systems can be expensive. This is most likely to be an issue for very small businesses that have less to automate and can handle all their data by traditional means.
Large companies with more robust budgets will probably find that the investment is well worth it in the long run. This includes private equity firms, their portcos, and private and public companies of all shapes and sizes.
While automation involves these and other risks, it’s an increasingly valuable and in-demand facet of business intelligence. Based on the feedback we receive from our clients and expert service providers, we wouldn’t shy away from exploring how your business can benefit from automation.
Now that you have considered the pros and cons of BI Automation, it’s time to look at the tools at your disposal. While all of these can have a significant impact on your business, you want to make sure you’re using the right ones.
Let’s get familiar with a few of the high-level categories, as well as some specific business automation technologies within them. That way, when our research and operations team connects you to a tailor-made, niche-specific firm to set up your BI automation, you’ll have an idea of what you’re looking for.
Dashboards
BI automation dashboards display key performance indicators, data points and other important metrics in an easy-to-understand format. They provide a 360-degree view of performance using charts, graphs and other visuals.
They offer a quick-glance overview of your organization’s most important metrics, allowing users to quickly identify areas of strong or weak performance, spot emerging trends and gain data-driven insights. Some examples include Power BI, Tableau and Qlik Sense.
Common metrics used to evaluate business performance are cash flow, customer satisfaction and website traffic. Others include sales revenue and customer loyalty.
When you work with an experienced data analytics firm, they’ll be able to match your business needs to the right tools.
Visualizations
BI automation visualizations enable end users to execute automated workflows based on insights within a report. The workflows can be data-contextual, meaning they can change based on filters.
They are often used to connect multiple data sources, create interactive dashboards and charts, provide real-time visualizations and alerts and utilize natural language processing.
This type of BI automation tool leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to automatically generate and apply predictive models based on data insights. Predictive models are employed to forecast what may occur in the future dependent on historical and current data.
These are often used to predict things like customer churn, sales revenue and product demand. They’re especially utilized in the healthcare, finance and marketing industries.
Data mining techniques to extract valuable insights from large data sets for making more informed decisions. It’s a branch of data science that searches for patterns, anomalies and correlations in using statistics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
It’s often used to solve customer segmentation, fraud detection and market basket analysis. Many of the tools listed in the sections above can also be used for these tasks.
If a lot of this sounds new to you and your team, that’s OK. In fact, Holms says that even a well-composed manual report can be a great launching point for BI automation.
“I would say even if you have an Excel report and it’s a good Excel report, you’re already ahead of the game,” he says.
If you don’t know where to start, set up a scoping call with our research and operations team. We’ll connect you to world-class firms like Datus’s, Holms’, or other PE-grade service providers that can serve your exact needs for your particular industry.
*Privacy is important to us. While the source and company name have been changed, these are real quotations from a real service provider in the BluWave Business Builders’ Network.
Service Provider Type: Independent Consultant with Financial Expertise
Industry: Healthcare
The Need
Ready to sell one of its portcos, the PE firm was looking for an outside expert to provide pre-sale diligence
The PE firm was ready to sell its diagnostic supplies and equipment manufacturer and was looking for a financial expert to get them across the finish line.
The Challenge
Financial expert to help prepare a portco for sale
The individual would need to help review quality of earnings, perform a market study, validate a financial model, coach management on pitching, and most importantly, be able to close the books and handle data requests.
How we helped
Connected the client witha PE-grade CFO
BluWave provided three experienced resources – all with CFO experience – from its pre-vetted network in less than 24 hours. We were by the firm’s side throughout the vetting calls, and helped them choose a best-fit option.
The Result
Consultant comes on-site and helps the PE firm close the sale in the same calendar year
Months after signing on the independent consultant, who worked on-site throughout the process, another PE firm purchased the portco. The consultant helped the organization with pre-sale diligence, optimized its finance function and ensured a smooth handoff to new ownership.
The buyers commented on the strong foundation and high growth potential of their new asset. The selling PE firm was equally pleased with the process.
We had a great experience with the consultant. My key feedback is that he has a great temperament and worked well with us and management. He has an ability to work independently and delivered solid results.
A product vision roadmap defines your vision and strategy, creates your product roadmap, gains alignment and buy-in, and tracks progress and re-aligning.
These steps serve as a guide for your team and key stakeholders throughout the product vision process.
Defining your product vision is the first step in creating a roadmap.
It should explain the purpose of your product, how it aligns with your company’s vision, the problems your product aims to solve and who it is intended for. It will guide all your product development efforts.
Your strategy should outline key objectives and priorities to achieve your vision. It should articulate how your product will be successful in the marketplace as well as differentiate itself from competitors.
Once you have defined your product vision and strategy, it’s time to map out your product roadmap.
This visual representation involves determining key product milestones and timelines to achieve the product vision and strategy. It also provides a high-level overview of the product’s development, identifying major releases and features.
The roadmap should be detailed enough to guide the product team yet concise enough for leadership and stakeholders to quickly grasp.
It requires balancing short-term and long-term goals to keep the product competitive while focusing on key priorities.
Communicating your product roadmap to stakeholders and customers is critical to gaining alignment and buy-in. Sharing it and receiving feedback will uncover questions and concerns to address.
The project leader must explain how it supports the overall vision and company strategy. They should then be willing to adapt the roadmap based on feedback to ensure support. This is a critical step for the success of a product, which is why it’s important to take the time to listen to needs and build consensus.
Once your product vision roadmap is in place, you must monitor key performance indicators to ensure it stays on track. Regularly revisiting your roadmap and vision will enable you to optimize your roadmap and achieve the best outcomes.
Some KPIs to track a product roadmap’s progress include:
Customer adoption and retention rates
Revenue and profitability
Customer satisfaction scores
Feature usage metrics
Market share
Product quality metrics
Tracking these metrics will ensure your roadmap is achieving key business and customer objectives.
Defining your product vision and strategy, mapping your product roadmap, gaining alignment and buy-in and tracking progress and re-aligning are key steps in this process. By following these steps and leveraging the resources available, you can create a clear roadmap.
By evaluating the technology, processes, and people within the finance function of their portcos, private equity firms can make informed decisions that can lead to improved financial performance and increased profitability.
Here are a few ways they’re already doing so:
Technology: After an acquisition, portfolio companies incur debt that they need to measure against for the duration of the hold period. To effectively measure financial goals like these, companies need a robust, PE-grade reporting package
People: Firms want to ensure that the right talent is in place to effectively manage the unique demands of a PE-backed finance function. Assessing finance talent often includes bringing in search firms to fill skill gaps, or bringing in leadership coaches and training providers
If you or your portcos have a finance need, or any other third-party need, contact our research and operations team to set up a scoping call.
A strong organic search presence is a great way to attract new readers, users or clients. As you rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), you can usually expect more traffic, conversions and revenue. But it’s important to have the right person in place to lead these efforts.
What is SEO? Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process or strategy behind improving a website’s content so that it organically ranks well on search engines like Google or Bing. This is different from paid search ads which fall under SEM, or search engine marketing.
A search engine optimization guru (though they probably don’t call themselves that) will know that more organic traffic to your website means more potential customers.
They will know how to improve your site’s user experience and position content in a way that boosts conversions. This is especially important if people can make purchases or book business directly on your site.
While SEM requires ongoing investments, the right organic search strategy can yield long-term results that require less maintenance. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though. A good search strategy could take months to bear fruit, depending on how competitive your market is.
That’s why SEO recruitment continues to be a hot topic for private equity firms, portfolio companies, and independent and public companies.
“SEO is an foundational component of any modern business’s digital marketing strategy,” BluWave’s Senior Content Marketing Manager Brad Gerick says. “With so much information available, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a true expert, which is why it can be helpful to work with a specialized recruiting firm to hire the right candidate.”
Let’s dive in to what you should look for in an SEO, and how to hire someone whose talent matches your needs.
What Skills and Tools Do You Need for SEO
On-Page Skills
On-page SEO skills include optimizing your website content and technical elements to improve your rankings in search engines. Some of the more important ones include:
Conducting keyword research to determine the best keywords and phrases to target for your site and content. Choose keywords that your audience is searching for and that you can rank for.
Optimizing your page titles, meta descriptions, header tags, image alt attributes and content for your target keywords. Include keywords prominently and naturally to signal their relevance to search engines.
Improving your internal linking structure by connecting related content and categories across your site. Link to high-quality, relevant content to guide users and search engines to your most important pages.
Optimizing your URL structure with descriptive, keyword-rich page names. Well-structured URLs make your pages easier to read, navigate and rank in search engines.
Providing valuable, high-quality content that matches for what your audience is searching. (The latter part is also known as keyword intent.) For more information about this, check out Google’s E-E-A-T documentation.
Off-Page Skills
Off-page SEO skills include building relationships with other websites and influencers to earn high-quality backlinks and increase your site’s authority. Key off-page SEO skills include:
Conducting outreach to other websites and influencers for backlink opportunities like guest posts, interviews, mentions and citations. Build relationships with other industry leaders to earn high-quality backlinks over time. Be careful, though. Buying backlinks or engaging in shady link-exchange tactics can get you in trouble with the algorithms. Avoid these schemes at all costs (no pun intended).
Leveraging social media platforms to increase exposure for your content and brand. Share your blog posts, news, events and other updates on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram to reach new potential customers and backlink partners.
Engaging with your audience and influencers through email marketing campaigns. Send a regular newsletter, promote new content, share industry news and build rapport with subscribers to earn more links and social shares.
Participating in relevant online communities and forums to establish yourself as a thought leader. Answer questions on sites like Quora, Reddit and industry-specific forums. Provide value to others while linking back to your website. (Do this with caution, though. Reddit moderators don’t like it when users hijack their subreddits simply to get more traffic.)
Technical SEO skills refer to the technical knowledge and abilities required to optimize a website for search engines like Google. Some key technical SEO skills include:
Optimizing page-load speed. Some tactics for this include reducing file sizes, minimizing redirects, optimizing images, caching content and compressing code. Fast page load speeds improve the user experience and search engine rankings. A well-structured site with logical navigation and internal links helps search engines understand your content. Google’s Core Web Vitals are a great starting point to learn more about this topic.
Ensuring your content is mobile-friendly and responsive, with a clear focus and user experience for all device types. The majority of web traffic now comes from mobile devices, so a mobile-optimized site is essential. In fact, Google uses mobile-first indexing to crawl sites.
Troubleshooting any technical SEO issues like duplicate content, broken links, crawl errors or penalties to resolve problems and avoid negative impacts on search visibility.
Content Marketing
Content marketing refers to the creation and distribution of valuable, relevant content to attract and retain customers. It is closely tied to SEO, as high-quality content helps to improve search rankings, increase traffic, build brand authority and boost lead generation. Key content marketing skills for SEO specialists include:
Conducting keyword research to identify topics and questions that your target audience is searching for. Then, create content that answers those questions and optimizes for relevant keywords.
Writing informative and engaging blog posts, articles, case studies, whitepapers and other content assets. Content should be valuable, well-researched, and optimized for both search engines and readers.
Promoting content on social media platforms to increase traffic and engagement. Share updates on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and LinkedIn to reach new readers and earn more links and social shares.
Analyzing the performance of your content using tools like Google Analytics, Search Console and Buzzsumo. Track traffic, rankings, engagement and conversions to determine what’s working and what needs improvement.
Strategy and Planning
SEO strategy and planning refer to the high-level thinking and goal setting required to optimize a website for search. Some key SEO strategy and planning skills include:
Conducting a comprehensive SEO audit to analyze your website and marketing performance. Review on-page and off-page factors like technical issues, content gaps, link profiles and keyword rankings to determine your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities.
Developing a data-driven SEO plan that outlines your goals, key objectives, actions, timelines, resources and expected outcomes. Set specific, measurable goals for traffic, rankings, conversions and revenue that align with your business objectives. Determine the strategies and tactics you will use to achieve those goals.
Implementing and monitoring your SEO plan to ensure you stay on track. Use project management tools and best practices to organize workflows, assign responsibilities, track progress and make adjustments as needed. Regularly evaluate your results and key metrics to determine what’s working and what needs improvement.
Adjusting your plan based on feedback, insights and changes in the search landscape. Search engines frequently update their algorithms and best practices, and the needs of your audience may evolve over time as well. Review your plan regularly and make data-driven changes to optimize your efforts and results.
Commonly Used SEO Tools
Here are some of the higher level categories of search-related tools, as well as some specific recommendations within each one:
Technical SEO:Screaming Frog, Google Search Console and Ahrefs Site Audit help assess technical issues that could affect your search rankings. They crawl your site to identify errors like broken links, slow page load times, duplicate content and more. They also provide metrics on site speed, mobile-friendliness and XML sitemaps to help optimize technical SEO.
Content optimization: Content optimization tools like Yoast SEO, Grammarly and Hemingway Editor help create blog posts, articles and other content that ranks well in search engines. They analyze content for keyword usage, readability, grammar and plagiarism to ensure it is high-quality, informative and optimized for your target audience.
Link building: Tools such as Ahrefs Backlink Checker, Moz Link Explorer and BuzzSumo help build high-quality backlinks to improve your site’s authority and search rankings. They provide data on your existing link profile as well as opportunities for new links and influencers who may be interested in linking to or sharing your content.
Analytics: Analytics tools like Google Analytics 4, Looker Studio and Google Tag Manager help track the performance of your SEO and content marketing efforts. They provide insights into metrics such as traffic, rankings, engagements, conversions and revenue to determine what’s working and what needs improvement.
Artificial Intelligence: With the wide release of ChatGPT, as well as the creation of myriad other AI tools, this is quickly becoming an essential part of the content-creation process. Just make sure the SEO you hire uses these tools to complement their job, and not do all the work for them. AI can be great, but it shouldn’t be applied to an SEO strategy without thorough human refinement and vigilance.
If your SEO candidate can’t talk to you about Google Search Console in detail, don’t hire them.
Assess a Candidate’s Knowledge and Experience
This role requires a combination of both technical knowledge and strategic thinking to analyze data, identify opportunities and develop high-impact solutions.
Here are some ways to make sure they fit the bill:
Online tests: Services like Imocha, TestGorilla and Vervoe offer skills assessment tests tailored for SEO specialists. These measure a candidate’s knowledge of on-page and off-page optimization, content strategy, link building, analytics and more.
Portfolio reviews: Ask the candidate to share examples of previous SEO projects, case studies or their own website to evaluate their work. Look for clear goals, data-driven insights and measurable results and impact. They may have to anonymize some parts of the report for client confidentiality, and that’s OK. The main think you want to see is that they have experience executing successful projects.
Case studies and scenarios: Present the candidate with an SEO challenge or problem and ask them to walk through how they would approach and solve it. This helps assess their strategic thinking, decision making and problem-solving abilities. Don’t be afraid to do it live during the interview. If they don’t know some of these things off the top of their head, they’re probably too green to lead in this area.
References and testimonials: Speaking with a candidate’s past clients or employers is one of the best ways to evaluate their skills, work quality and professionalism. Look for references that can speak to their SEO experience, key accomplishments and strengths. This will also be a sign that they’re pleasant to work with if others are willing to help them.
When you use a resource from the BluWave-vetted network, they have already been vetted multiple times before we ever consider connecting you. They must also have multiple high-quality references from private equity firms and other top businesses.
Even then, we won’t just send you a list of all the candidates available. We will select from the best resources on standby to give you two or three best-fit options for your specific situation. Within one business day, you’ll have two or three SEO options that are tailored to your niche.
There are many key terms used in SEO that are important to understand. They describe concepts, strategies and metrics that specialists reference on a regular basis. Some of the top words and phrases to know include:
Basic terms:
Search engine: A website that allows users to search for information on the internet, such as Google, Bing or Baidu.
Crawler: A program that searches the web to build an index of websites and content for a search engine.. This could also be referred to as a “bot” or “spider.”
Index: A search engine’s database of websites, pages and content that have been crawled and indexed.
Query: The search terms entered by a user into a search engine. This is more commonly referred to as a “keyword” in many cases.
SERP: Search engine results page, or the page of results returned for a user’s search query. It’s pronounced just as it’s spelled.
Organic vs paid results: Organic results are earned, while paid results are advertising spots purchased by businesses. Make sure you’re not hiring an SEM expert to do SEO work. While related, these are completely different skills.
This is a search engine results page (SERP).
Technical terms:
URL: Uniform Resource Locator, or the full address of a page on the web. And a URL slug is everything that comes after .com or .net, for example. This page’s URL is https://bluwave.net/seo-recruitment/, but the slug is simply /seo-recruitment/.
Domain name: The main part of a URL, like “bluwave.net“.
HTTP status code: A number that indicates the status of a request to a web server, such as 200 for success or 404 for not found.
Robots.txt: A text file that tells search engine crawlers which parts of a website to index or avoid. If a candidate doesn’t know how to find your robots.txt file in 10 seconds or less, don’t hire them. (Hint: All they have to do is go to yoursite.com/robots.txt)
Sitemap: An XML file that lists the pages on a website to help search engines discover and crawl content.
On-page terms:
Keyword: A word or phrase that users may search for to find content on a specific topic.
Title tag: HTML element that contains the main headline for a page and is displayed in search results. In the code, this would be <title>Page Title Here</title>. This is one of the most important elements of ranking on SERPs.
Meta description: A concise summary of a page’s content that is displayed in search results. This is important, but it does not have an affect on a page’s ranking.
Heading tag: HTML elements like <h1> to <h6> that indicate the importance and structure of content on a page. A page’s headline is usually within an <h1> tag. It’s best to have only one <h1> tag per page.
Alt text: Description of an image that is displayed if the image cannot be seen by a user. This is especially important to making your site accessible for people with disabilities.
Why do you have more than one H1?
— johnmu is not a chatbot yet 🐀 (@JohnMu) June 15, 2017
Off-page terms:
Link: A hyperlink that connects one page to another.
Anchor text: The clickable text of a link.
Backlink: An incoming link to a page from another website. This is a significant factor in ranking well on Google.
Link building: The process of acquiring high-quality backlinks to improve a website’s authority and search rankings. This is best done naturally and not through paid schemes or shady exchanges.
Domain authority: A score that indicates the strength and influence of a website based on the quality and quantity of links pointing to it. Search engines like Google do not recognize domain authority. It’s a score used by platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush. Think of it as a barometer and not a thermostat.
Top KPIs in SEO
To track the success of your SEO efforts, you need to choose the right KPIs. Some of the top ones to consider are:
Business outcomes: Focus on conversions, customer lifetime value, cost per acquisition and return on investment. These show the direct impact of SEO on your business.
Traffic quality: Monitor organic visibility, organic sessions, branded vs non-branded traffic and bounce rate. This helps ensure you’re getting high-quality traffic. Google Analytics 4 is a great way to do so.
Keyword performance: Track your keyword rankings, keyword difficulty and keyword opportunity. See how you can improve your rankings and find new keywords to target.
Link profile: Evaluate your backlinks, referring domains, domain authority and link velocity. Build high-quality links to boost your rankings.
These KPIs provide actionable insights into your SEO progress and help guide your strategy. Track them regularly to maximize your search visibility and drive more traffic and conversions.
Interview Questions for an SEO Candidate
Interview questions help evaluate if a candidate has the necessary skills and experience for an SEO role. They reveal how well they understand SEO concepts, strategies and best practices.
Here are some sample questions you can use:
General questions:
What is your approach to SEO and how do you stay up-to-date with trends?
What are your top priorities for SEO and how do you determine key performance indicators (KPIs)?
How would you integrate SEO with our overall digital marketing strategy?
Technical questions:
How would you evaluate our website’s technical SEO health? What issues should we fix?
How can we improve site speed and mobile-friendliness? What tools would you use?
Here are some of the things you would want to see from a candidate’s past work. While no one will have expertise in all these areas, having at least some of them is essential.
SEO Projects:
Types of projects, such as technical audits, content optimization, link building.
Scope and complexity of projects, including the number of web pages, amount of content, types of keywords.
The candidate’s level of responsibility and involvement e.g. executing tasks, managing projects, leading SEO teams.
SEO Results:
Improvements in search rankings, organic traffic, conversions.
Growth in key metrics like impressions, clicks, dwell time.
Awards, case studies or other recognition of their results and impact
SEO Tools:
SEO software, analytics platforms, rank tracking tools, etc. that the candidate has expertise in using.
Technical skills with HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript. Even if the candidate isn’t a “coder” or programmer, they should have knowledge of some of these languages.
SEO Skills:
Strong research, analysis, problem-solving and critical thinking.
The ability to optimize content for both search engines and users.
Proficiency in link building, outreach, content promotion and other SEO strategies.
Excellent communication skills for educating clients and coworkers about SEO.
Keep Up with SEO Trends and Best Practices
There are many great resources these days to keep up with the latest SEO trends and best practices. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to tell which are legitimate. Here are a few recommendations both for your benefit, as well as what you might like to hear from how a candidate stays informed:
Blogs: Follow reputable SEO blogs like Moz, Ahrefs, Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal. They frequently publish articles on the latest trends, updates from search engines and expert opinions.
Podcasts: Listen to SEO podcasts such as Search Off the Record (Google’s official show) and Search Engine Journal Show. Experts are often interviewed to discuss trending topics, share their insights and debate controversial issues.
Webinars: Attend webinars from platforms like Ahrefs, Clearscope and BrightEdge. They frequently host live sessions with SEO professionals talking about trending strategies, new opportunities and ways to overcome challenges. The Q&A portions of these webinars also provide useful discussions on recent changes in search rankings and algorithms.
Online courses: Take online courses on SEO and related topics from Udemy, Thinkific, Kajabi and LinkedIn Learning. These courses teach the latest techniques and best practices from industry experts. While some cover SEO fundamentals, many focus on trending areas like technical SEO, content optimization, link building and keyword research. Though often paid, the courses help gain a deeper understanding of current SEO methods.
Conferences: Join online or in-person SEO conferences to hear from industry leaders, learn from case studies and network with other professionals. Major conferences like SearchLove, Friends of Search Fest, Brighton SEO, MozCon and Mn Search Summit feature keynote speeches, panel discussions, and presentations on the newest trends, innovations, and issues in SEO. Attending these conferences is a great way to stay ahead of competitors and meet like-minded SEO practitioners.
MozCon is one of the more popular and well-known search-based conferences.
Do you need a digital content maven to give your website(s) a deep audit? Or perhaps this is something you never considered and don’t know where to start. A proven SEO expert is just what you want.
The BluWave network of highly vetted service providers has search engine optimization resources on standby, no matter your organization, website size or industry.
When you get on a scoping call with our research and operations team, they’ll perform a quick but detailed evaluation of your situation and provide two to three best-fit SEO resources within a single business day.
With so much opportunity in organic search, you don’t want to waste another day with a website that isn’t optimized for growing your business. Contact us today to get started.
