Operating Partners Forum New York 2019

This closed-door session will explore what it’s like being a woman in PE & VC portfolio operations:
• What are the issues causing a disparity in genders?
• Exploring career paths, development, and how to position yourself as female leaders
• What are you doing at your companies to tackle diversity and open dialogue?
• Are there any changes in recruiting that will create a more equal playing field?
• Looking at trends and stats in gender & diversity in PE & VC

Facilitators:
Lily Chang, Chief Portfolio Services Officer, Leonard Green & Partners
Tricia Witty, Senior Principal, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan

Hosted by:

• Understanding warning signs and weaknesses early on to develop your strategy
• Defining key success factors to go from distressed to transformation
• Sharing successful turnaround war stories: dos and don’ts in troubled situations
• How can operating partners work with management teams to enact an effective turnaround plan?
• Focusing on a viable business with growth potential and the workforce of the future
• Utilizing data-driven analysis in your turnaround strategy

Moderator:
Ray Anderson, Principal, Transaction Advisory Services, EY

• Grasping misalignments in the PE firms’ investment theses
• Achieving senior team alignment in the first 100 days
• How to you create buy-in for your value creation plan with management?
• How can PE best support portco CEOs and CFOs?
• Risk, governance, leadership: what are the pain points?
• Helping management teams that are great at running a business think about growing a business
• Board dynamics: how CFOs work with the board and with CEOs as strategic partners

Moderator:
Ted Bililies, Managing Director and Chief Talent Officer, AlixPartners

Panelists:
Michael Kohlsdorf, President, Francisco Partners Consulting
Mike Pulli, CEO, Verifone

Interviewee:
Mark Sotir, Co-President, Equity Group Investments

• Looking at specific ways operating partners are harnessing better digital strategies for returns based on where they are in their lifecycle
• Covering the four phases: due diligence, 100 days, hold, exit
• Understanding how operating partner teams get started when it comes to thinking more digitally
• How do you diagnose digital opportunities & analytic capabilities and catalyze change across your portfolio?
• What are the implications for each stage of the investment? What are important differences by industry?

Moderator:
Brad Haller, Director, Mergers & Acquisitions, West Monroe Partners

• Operating synergies: how the deal was done and what role did the operating partner have in it in terms of due diligence and then post-close
• Achieving an operating partner mentality at your firm: integrating operating partners in the investment lifecycle
• Operating partner success factors when partnering with deal teams
• How does your team define a successful deal? Are there standard growth, EBITDA, cost, or ROI metrics that are utilized?
• How do you really get at what the opportunities are to understand what the value creation plan should be?

• Inside the mind of a CEO – what they think about and what keeps them up at night
• Understanding playbooks for growth by industry sector and how value creation is different in every sector
• Moving quickly on top line growth
• Dissecting operational models and executional capabilities that work for the CEO

Moderator:
Jim Corey, Managing Partner, Blue Ridge Partners

This session will allow the audience to break into interactive roundtable discussions with designated facilitators at each table. The following key value creations areas will be covered per table:
• Table 1: Digitalization & technology
• Table 2: Human capital & leadership
Facilitator:
Hami Ebrahimi, Managing Director, Operations & Strategy, OMERS Private Equity
• Table 3: Sales & go-to-market strategy
• Table 4: Pricing
• Table 5: Cost reduction/optimization
• Table 6: Digital Marketing
• Table 7: Supply chain & procurement
Facilitator:
Wendy Buxton, President, LynnCo Supply Chain Solutions
• Table 8: Finance
• Table 9: Automation
• Table 10: Governance

Whether a merger equals or add-ons to a platform, when it comes to successful integration, leaders are often missing (or worse, ignoring) a critical element necessary for short and long-term value creation: organizational culture. Lack of successful cultural integration impacts the number one value driver in the combined firm—the people getting the job done. This session will explore key considerations for driving a cohesive cultural vision, integration, and ongoing execution in the midst of a complex transaction to achieve synergy targets.

• Reliance on conventional KPIs actually blocks revenue & EBITDA gains
• Integrated analytics pinpoint previously invisible revenue & EBITDA upsides
• Real-time profit impact visualizations sharpen planning & tighten control
• Ongoing analytics link revenue & EBITDA impacts to specific operating decisions
• Advanced analytics enables an entirely new level of operating control & financial results

• When to use consultants vs build capability in-house
• Which specialized third-party support is most valuable for opcos?
• How to identify and select third-party providers
• How to scope projects and manage third parties during the course of a project
• How do you view third party advisors in the value creation process?
• How to hold third parties accountable and how to hold portfolio companies accountable

Moderator:
Sean Mooney, CEO, BluWave

Participants:
Andrew Walshe, Director of Portfolio Operations, Sightway Capital

• Sharing success stories of partnerships with deal teams, management, and external resources
• Impact of recent trends on due diligence & valuations
• Commonly overlooked sources of value

Moderator:
Curt Gendron, Senior Manager, M&A Advisory, Crowe

• Framing the thought process around organizational leadership changes
• Criteria for evaluating leaders in portfolio companies with PE owners
• Assessing the cultural impact of making early and significant changes in leadership
• How to manage through the change and motivate the team/organization to support the changes
• Lessons learned – where leadership changes went well and hindsight from changes that went wrong

Moderator:
Shannon Gabriel, Managing Director, Leadership Solutions, TBM Consulting Group

Learn about how the modern finance function is being transformed by software, AI and new approaches in the back-office. This panel of experts will dive into how AI and other technology is altering the jobs of CFOs. Throughout the conversation, we will share insights on the impact technology has on finance.

Moderator:
Scott Tynes, CEO, Consero Global

• Key questions and benchmarks during diligence
• Ongoing metrics to track during the hold period
• When to invest in additional sales headcount
• When to invest in overlay headcount (e.g. lead gen, channel, specialists)
• When to invest in enablement, technology and tools

• Vetting cyber security when acquiring companies in deals
• Discussing standards for cyber security across portfolio
• Information security assessments: how to keep your guard up
• First-hand portfolio examples covering what to do if it happens to your business

Participants:
Mike Barry, Operating Partner, Francisco Partners Consulting

• Individual company cost optimization vs. cross-portfolio programs
• Looking at cost savings/procurement optimization in the diligence phase
• Procurement transformations in the first 100 days
• Building cross-portfolio strategic roadmaps and the importance of spend visibility

Moderator:
Jake Wojcik, Senior Vice President, Insight Sourcing Group & SpendHQ

• Focusing on digital sales transformations and profit driven digital marketing channels to drive topline growth and scale your business
• Optimizing the digital sales organization: what strategies and playbooks are you using?
• Understanding your digital marketing effectiveness in looking at the consumer
• Utilizing strategic marketing efforts and growth strategies based on market dynamics
• Key insights in demand generation, voice of customer, messaging, and content creation

• Discussing the good, the bad, and the confusing aspects of the PE firm-finance dynamic
• Uncovering the misalignment between the value that sponsors feel they provide their portfolio companies, and how that value is (or is not) received by CFOs
• Looking at helpful insights to improve CFO-PE sponsor communication, collaboration, and ultimately, investment success
• Examining five critical dimensions: the focus – PE-backed CFO objectives, the model – PE firm organizational & operational paradigms, the value – PE firm contributions & guidance, the work – CFO reporting & resourcing, the fault lines – big picture problems

• Vetting your tech infrastructure to identify limitations and IT cost reduction
• Managing transitions smoothly from a tech and digital point of view
• What does your 100-day tech plan look like and what can be modified in the process?
• Fast start accelerators – adding value through tech enablement early on
• What tech tools are you using to drive more efficiency, improve performance, and scale your business?
• What outcomes were realized from technology to drive value creation for revenue & operations

Moderator:
A.Amarnath, Senior Vice President & Global Head – Strategic Engagements, Wipro

• How are you thinking about opportunities around automation?
• Doing automation right: utilizing automation technologies to accelerate value creation
• How to prioritize and align business and technology priorities
• Enabling scale & improving profitability
• Transforming the cost base and accelerating margin expansion

• Identifying pricing value in your portfolio early on
• Capturing pricing upside and other profitable growth opportunities within portfolio companies
• How pricing compares to other value creation strategies across PE deals
• Case studies in strategic pricing projects and other topline initiatives
• Integrating data to inform pricing decisions

• What roles exist on your operations team? What are the specialist skill sets & traits of successful operating partners? What makes a great digital operating partner?
• What will the future of the role look like in an increasingly digital world?
• What are current best practices in building out an operating team: structures, staffing, & value creation programs
• In-house operating capacity vs. outsourced services/advisors
• How to quantify operating partner performance: KPIs and metrics used by firms
• What are the primary goals for your team and how are you positioned with your portfolio?
• Engaging with portfolio companies to drive initiatives: is your approach autocratic or laissez faire?