Private Equity Solutions
The technology assets and opportunity to create value via IT has become an important consideration when deciding which portcos to acquire.
beiNVENTiV offers focused IT solutions for private equity firms and holding companies, from due diligence before the acquisition purchase to cyber security reporting (before, after, on an ongoing basis). We have experience supporting the technology needs for acquisitions, including platforms, add-ins and carve-outs, across industries, ensuring you have the technology partner you need on Day 1.
It’s imperative to know the status of a company’s technology before purchasing it. The information we compile during the IT Due Diligence can be used to help (re)valuate a company, provide negotiating power, find future cost savings, aid in the decision of whether that company is a good purchase, and provide you with a plan to improve any IT weaknesses so you have no surprises.
It’s imperative to know the status of a company’s technology before purchasing it. The information we compile during the IT Due Diligence can be used to help (re)valuate a company, provide negotiating power, find future cost savings, aid in the decision of whether that company is a good purchase, and provide you with a plan to improve any IT weaknesses so you have no surprises.
beiNVENTiV conducts a thorough discovery process to assess the portco’s infrastructure, IT processes, and security. We’ll provide a personalized action plan to improve and scale operations and, where appropriate, reduce costs so that you can estimate the true cost of acquiring a specific portco much earlier in the purchasing process and reduce the chances of a post-sale surprise.
Based on the due diligence results and your decision to proceed with the purchase, you’ll have the plan you need to move forward, regardless of whether you merge the portco’s technology with another business or parent company, set it up as a stand-alone company under your ownership with minimal investment, or invest in improving the current technology to allow for scale.
The key components to an IT due diligence are:
beiNVENTiV conducts a thorough discovery process to assess the portco’s infrastructure, IT processes, and security. We’ll provide a personalized action plan to improve and scale operations and, where appropriate, reduce costs so that you can estimate the true cost of acquiring a specific portco much earlier in the purchasing process and reduce the chances of a post-sale surprise.
Based on the due diligence results and your decision to proceed with the purchase, you’ll have the plan you need to move forward, regardless of whether you merge the portco’s technology with another business or parent company, set it up as a stand-alone company under your ownership with minimal investment, or invest in improving the current technology to allow for scale.
The key components to an IT due diligence are:
Case Study:
IT Due Diligence Reduces Software Licensing Costs by $1M
Because IT Due Diligences are relatively recent best practice for private equity deals, post-acquisition surprises are unfortunately common.
A private equity firm acquired an unprofitable retailer, then discovered the IT Budget was unexpectedly high. beINVENTiV was brought in to identify areas to save money.
Within three weeks, we found $1M in savings per year by reducing overprovisioning of application licensing, swapping some Microsoft 365 license types for other more cost-effective licenses that still met the portco’s needs, and identifying other areas to eliminate waste or bring in more cost-effective technology.
When purchasing any company that develops code in-house, whether for internal use or for external sales, it’s critical to perform a third-party code review to validate your investment and avoid surprises. We evaluate how well the code is written from a technical perspective, and if it adheres to best practices. Well-written code is easier to understand and maintain, support, and runs more efficiently. With well-written code, you can add in-demand features to increase customer adoption faster and scale the business quickly.
When a portco’s systems are too dated, or incompatible with your business processes, or need to be moved to a platform company’ies environment, a migration can address many of the issues uncovered during due diligence. We can help migrate from a legacy system to a modernized system that is better aligned with your investment strategy or we can help migrate the portco onto your platform company’s systems.
If you decide your portco should be migrated to your platform company’s systems, we can help. A common request is to merge environments, and migrate from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, or vice versa. Another frequent migration initiative is moving from on-premises systems to cloud solutions.
Offering Spotlight: Many of our private equity firms prefer to implement a suite of solutions, such as Microsoft 365 Business bundles. Business Premium is a comprehensive offering that combines the power of familiar office productivity tools with security management options.
A common challenge we see with carve-outs is that the new company does not own much of or possibly any of the IT resources it depends on, nor does it bring along the IT staff to support its needs. For these deals, it’s a clean slate that allows you to build its IT from scratch and leapfrog over any issues identified during the IT Due Diligence (build a new “right-sized” IT environment).
Whether your portco is a carve-out, add-in, or platform, an IT Transformation improves poorly performing or merely adequate IT infrastructure and processes. A “good” or “great” IT implementation follows best practices, achieves business goals within budget, and reduces the effort spent overseeing it.
Case Study:
beiNVENTiV was brought in to assist with the IT environment for a 200-person carve-out, where the existing technology was retained by the original parent company. The original scope of the project was to set up the carve-out with the same technology they had been using, which was the lower risk option.
Upon review, the total costs of setting them up with the same large enterprise hardware, software, and cloud usage they had been using exceeded the planned budget.
beiNVENTiV proposed a new environment better suited to a mid-market-sized company, meeting their IT requirements and saving $700K compared to the original planned IT environment.
Did you know that 82% of ransomware attacks target small businesses?
Without a security audit, it’s impossible to know how at risk your portco is for cyber attacks. The number of software systems and the age of their technology increase the odds that they are an attractive and easy target for attackers.
Private Equity firms face additional challenges because each of their portcos typically use their own cybersecurity tools, software, practices, and teams.
With beiNVENTiV’s Portco Cyber Defense solution, you’ll receive an upfront security audit that ranks each of your portcos against twenty security measures. Every quarter, an updated report is generated providing an ongoing view of the improvements.
We can provide full outsourced IT services (MSP) for your private equity firm or for one or more of your portcos, so that you can focus on your business.
This can simplify IT management for portcos that did not have their own IT department. We provide a team of experts that can handle everything from fractional CIO services down to day-to-day help desk support.
