Private Equity Firm

The Ask

A private equity firm in the Pacific Northwest requested a feasibility assessment for the integration of 2 sales organizations as the PE firm privatized and consolidated 2 business units from a Fortune 100 technology corporation.  Upon submission of the assessment, Holland Pipelines was chosen to work with the various internal stakeholders to oversee that integration.

The Challenge

As we launched our discovery phase, it was clear that the 2 organizations shared very little in terms of Go-to-Market strategy and resources.  Several key leaders from both organizations exited at privatization leaving large gaps in knowledge-sharing and one of the organizations was significantly more mature than the other.  Each organization is now stepping away from centralized fiscal support and responsibility to a multi-billion dollar enterprise into an entrepreneurial spirit and accountability.

The Solution

Holland Pipelines began with a deep-dive discovery phase into 3 areas.  Business development initiatives (successes and failures), existing toolkits for revenue capture and tracking and finally, the human capital driving both sales organizations.  We were fortunate to be in lockstep with the founding partner of the private equity firm who also served as CEO of the newly formed technology company.  This allowed us to act as the change agent through the integration while the sales organizations continued revenue momentum.

We were able to launch a robust, reliable business development engine serving both organizations, which allowed each organization to also feed its counterpart.  Through one of our key technology partners, we consolidated 6 different software applications (presentation demos, contracting, project tracking etc) into one robust CRM platform adopted company-wide as the single source of truth.  With the new foundation in place, we then helped align several disparate revenue teams into one regionally and vertically aligned machine.

Outcome

“Holland Pipelines were prepared to ask the difficult questions we wouldn’t have posed internally.  … (and) broke down the potential barriers to market with little to no disruption in our day-to-day.  I believe we now have a solid foundation and roadmap for sustainable success moving forward.”

Founding Partner and (interim) CEO