PE-CXO’s Success Stories cast a spotlight on private equity-backed operators and the tools and tactics they leverage to create real value. In each entry, a world-class executive details a practical solution to a critical business issue. To be featured, contact mallory.stokker@pe-cxo.com with the subject line “Success Story.”
Executive: Kevin Herr, CFO/COO at KnowledgeLake and multi-time PE-backed finance lead.
Challenge: Limited transparency into revenue cycles in a highly acquisitive, PE-backed software solutions platform.
Solution: A Lead-to-Cash project to identify opportunities for consolidation and optimization.
Private equity-backed CFOs often must integrate multiple acquisitions to enhance growth.
Ensuring acquisitive activity not only doesn’t harm the organization’s revenue engine but actively enhances it can be quite challenging. In a previous PE-backed management position, our business acquired four companies in 18 months. The investment thesis was to accelerate revenue in each business by cross-selling and up-selling product sets.
Many challenges soon surfaced. Externally, these businesses faced different markets, different buyer journeys, and different competitive environments. Internally, they had different marketing cadences, different sales motions, different sales enablement routines, and different CRMs/ERPs.
This incongruity presented potential impediments to accelerating revenue growth, which was the heart of the value proposition. To help gain transparency and understand how we could take a collection of dis...