Motive Partners Turns to Maestro for Structured, Data-Powered Value Creation Framework
Overview
Motive Partners, a private equity firm focused on technology-enabled companies in the financial services sector, wasn’t actively looking to incorporate a new software platform into their portfolio operations at a significant scale. In late 2022, however, Motive began to familiarize itself with Maestro and consider how it could help formalize and up-level the firm’s approach to value creation.
By 2023, Motive had turned to Maestro to deliver a framework that would provide teams with the ability to monitor the status of initiatives, ensure resources are allocated appropriately, and collaborate with all stakeholders to keep plans on track…
In search of a formalized, structured approach to value creation
Motive had been using a variety of portfolio management solutions combined with PowerPoint and Excel for portfolio monitoring, value creation planning, project execution, and reporting.
From its first fund to the next, Motive had adopted an increasingly more active posture in working across its portfolio to execute value creation strategies. The firm saw a need to formalize its approach to value creation.
“As we have deployed more investments, our approach has become more active in terms of management. It’s not just about writing checks; it’s about supporting these companies through their growth. This has become a more central part of our strategy.”
– Ed Hennah, VP Portfolio Operations, Motive Partners.
From piloting existing plans to leading value creation with new investments
In 2023, Motive moved a handful of existing value creation plans onto Maestro as part of a pilot to understand how the platform could keep these plans fresh and ensure resources were being optimized.
Before long, Motive began using Maestro heavily for value creation planning exercises with new investments where the firm had a high degree of control.
Guided by the Maestro operating model, Motive teams started using the platform extensively to create detailed plans, monitor the status of initiatives in real-time, capture execution level detail and corresponding KPIs, and ensure all reporting was kept up to date.
“We gained a great deal of operational efficiency by standardizing the framework across the portfolio. Using Maestro, we can now bring together KPIs, deploy a structured value creation framework, and have all our teams collaborating in a single place.”
Accessing critical performance data and analytics with speed and ease
Today, Maestro continues to play a growing role in Motive’s portfolio operations performance. Incoming investments are on-boarded onto the platform in predetermined frameworks based on deal control and size.
Maestro’s analytics capabilities have helped Motive contextualize the performance of KPIs in a relatively seamless way. Information can be accessed and consumed without having to cobble data from disparate spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.
“Maestro’s analytics and attribution capabilities set it apart from other solutions we’ve seen in the market. We’re able to set a plan with targets that roll up to business fundamentals, like revenue, EBITDA, cash, and valuation, and drill down into the plan to see the impact and status of each initiative.”
Ed Hennah, VP Portfolio Operations, Motive Partners.
Maestro’s critical role in portfolio operations due to expand
Internally, the capabilities of the Maestro platform have helped Motive shape and refine its operating model. Investment, operating partner, and internal operating teams are now collaborating more efficiently.
As a Maestro client, Motive has also benefited from the insights, industry best practices, and experiences shared by Maestro’s customer success team. The firm has leveraged learnings from value creation plans created within Maestro from across the industry to continuously refine its internal operating model, build more efficient plans, and extract maximum value from the platform.
With a deeper understanding of the value it can provide, Motive expects to expand its use of Maestro, including replacing existing solutions and consolidating processes onto the platform.
“Maestro has become an important part of our operating model. We’re now able to bring together quantitative and qualitative governance into a single platform and strategic framework. We continue to get more functionality and benefits we didn’t expect as the platform has continued to evolve.”
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