Our investments to support your investing
Because 2020 let us work with some investor friends more than others, I thought it might be helpful to briefly summarise the ways in which the Catalysis team has been honing its ability to provide you with what we believe has become the most agile and insightful source of support for mid-market investors around management, organisation and strategy issues:
Increased Capacity
Despite the slowdown last spring/summer, we believe the need for good advice on assessing and improving management teams is growing, so we have expanded our team to four professionals with another colleague, Peter, who was a senior strategist in Orange when it rolled out across Europe. That capacity has allowed us to meet all our deadlines comfortably on 33 projects since mid-August (of which 25 transactions). We are currently bringing in a very experienced business psychologist to boost our ability to handle high stakes assessment work.
Increased Efficiency
We have invested heavily over the last 12 months into automation and data flow management to generate individual, team and organisational benchmarks. We appointed a full-time ‘bright young thing’ (Adina) to ensure data and report integrity when we are working at pace – as we are mostly asked to do! We are currently rolling out a SaaS productivity suite and have appointed someone into an office management and client success role.
Deeper Insight
Better data means a better ability to build diverse evidence into deeper insight via more accessible reports (we have reinvented them) – and let our team focus on giving you and investee teams practical advice on what to do with any issues, dilemmas and opportunities. Our background-checking partners, Neotas, have also invested in new tech and report formats which, as before, we provide to our clients at a discount to rack rates.
Wider Experience of the UK Mid-market
We have now completed just over 450 projects since 2010, of which over 90% involve mid-private equity firms. Even if like everyone else we are mostly working remotely, we remain active all over the UK and beyond.
Wider Experience of Key Sectors
The current crisis has shifted what’s hot and what’s not: most of our work this last year has been in TMT and specialist manufacturing/engineering. Happily we have depth in the areas which our clients seem to be looking at currently - TMT (92 projects), Manufacturing and engineering (112), B2B services (71), Distribution and wholesaling (42), Professional Services (34).
Greater International Capability
We observe that more of the companies we get to work with have some kind of international dimension, either existing or intended. So maybe it is helpful that our five person team can interview and reference in French, German, Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Portuguese and Italian if needed.
New Tools to Make People and Strategy Issues Easier
The lockdown gave us time to build a suite of tools to efficiently specify ten senior roles and, later, get equivalent feedback from finalist candidates to help prepare interviews. Another questionnaire assesses how investee value drivers have been affected by Covid. We are preparing another one to assist with preparation for strategy sessions, to save time on the day.
So, happy hunting in the current active market. We’d love to show you the benefits the investments above can hopefully offer you when the right occasion arises.
Get in touch
If you would like to find out more about how we work with investors and leadership teams, feel free to ask us for introductions to clients who know us best.
