Every day there seems to be a new article in the PE industry press about the importance of PE firms generating growth from their portfolio companies. Many of the articles conclude that in today’s brave, new PE world, that generating portfolio company growth is now more important to a PE firms’ overall investor returns than are a firms’ proprietary deal flow or  its financial management/expertise.

This short article on PE Industry growth begins by commending the ACG on the webinar it sponsored today: “Advanced Customer Due Diligence – 5 Tools to Improve Integration & Accelerate Growth.” The informative, well produced and moderated webinar focused on a growth related platform for PE firms that was developed by Walker Information, Inc. (http://www.walkerinfo.com/) and executed by Driehars PE (http://www.driehauspe.com/).

Walker’s approach seems to be onto something. It is a PE growth platform that is straight forward, proven effective, measurable and affordable. To get the best results from their platform, PE firms use it to pre-plan for growth at a target company during the due diligence process. The specifics of how they help PE firms and their target companies to segment and then plan for growth at the target company’s customers is intriguing and well worth a review. I wanted to hear a bit more about the challenges of implementation, but the PE executive from Driehars PE gave his testimony as to how well it worked for them.

The Walker approach and Walker’s historic positive results for PE firms are all the more impressive in light of today’s slow growth markets. In slow growth markets, PE firms that need growth from their portfolio companies (i.e. all PE firms) need a pro-active organic growth planning process and Walker seems to have it.

Like Walker, MRA has also been blogging about its growth planning process and results for PE firms. The MRA process is also best used at the time of due diligence work and like Walker, MRA’s process is straight forward, proven, measurable and affordable. While Walker is far more detailed and precise on customer related segmentation and planning, MRA’s process is much more encompassing of broader target company sales and marketing issues and plans. For more information, see http://michaelrothadvisors.com/brave-new-pe-world/#more-477.

Both platforms can be the difference in a PE firm succeeding in generating immediate target investment growth and overall PE firm investor returns.

April 23, 2014