Allow me to introduce myself…

Hello there! I’m a freshly-minted Associate at OpenView Venture Partners. I’m looking forward to working with some fantastic expansion-stage tech companies in the coming years.

For my first OpenView blog post, let me take a stroll down memory lane..

In a past life I worked at Diamond Management & Technology Consultants (now part of PWC). One of my most memorable engagements at Diamond was a rapid IT strategy assessment for a large acquisition. An $8Bn company had purchased a $3Bn+ transportation services company in the US. Our job was to recommend how to consolidate the two companies’ IT functions.

Walking into the acquired company, we were confronted with a typical IT setup: over 100 people in IT building and testing in-house software and ‘keeping the lights on’. But when we heard about the acquiring company’s IT, we were shocked: although their company had more than twice the revenue, their IT staff numbered less than 20!

The difference was that the acquirer used a lot of managed services. SaaS services such as Salesforce.com and Hyperion were powering the company. This helped the company’s IT stay agile and capital efficient. More importantly, they could focus on what they’re good at—i.e. landing large accounts and handling complex logistics—without being distracted by inflexible IT and slow deployment.

In recent years, the opportunities to outsource the functions in your business have increased tremendously. Whatever the size of your business, non-core capabilities in your value chain can be ported to SaaS in effective, secure ways. And the results can be truly astounding.