Companies backed by private equity firms aim to control costs, streamline operations, increase business insights, and boost profitability to meet investor expectations and increase EBITDA. NetSuite Alliance Partners play a crucial role in helping PE-backed firms realize those objectives. NetSuite is the solution of choice for PE portfolio companies, and our Alliance Partners bring deep expertise and proven methodologies to get companies live on NetSuite quickly, with strong results out of the gate and into the future.
This is the third post in a blog series showcasing our 2024 Alliance Partner Spotlight Award winners in the private equity category. These partners have excelled in various scenarios, from clients needing to upgrade from an entry-level or legacy system and manual spreadsheets to clients looking to standardize financial and operational management atop a unified platform after a merger left it with dual systems.
Customer: Verita
Private Equity Carveout Spotlight Award Winner: Bridgepoint Consulting
Verita, known as Kurtzman Carson Consultants until a rebrand in June 2024, provides legal, fiduciary, and administrative services to attorneys and businesses in areas such as corporate restructuring, mass tort, and settlement administration. Founded in 2001 and based outside Los Angeles, Verita is owned by GCP Capital Partners.
Verita previously had a complex legacy IT landscape that included Epicor ERP, Oracle Fusion, Hyperion, and Journyx for time tracking. The system environment was not optimized and didn’t support efficiency in finance processes, such as billing, reporting, accounts payable (AP), and commissions tracking. A NetSuite implementation by Bridgepoint Consulting’s Cloud Solutions team has simplified the IT landscape and created new efficiencies.
Verita has reduced costs with a small team handling billing and AP processing, previously done as a shared service by the PE parent. Verita is saving time with automated intercompany postings through a Bridgepoint customization to allocate expenses across subsidiaries and projects which has significantly improved visibility into project tracking, including project profitability. Financial insights are enhanced across the company with data at users’ fingertips, enabling growth-oriented business decisions.
Customer: Nexus Brands Group
Mergers and Acquisitions Spotlight Award Winner: Bryant Park Consulting
Growing to nearly 20 brands though mergers and acquisitions, Nexus Brands Group companies provide business professionals with products and services in diverse markets such as tattoo supplies, pet care, and health and beauty. Based in Orange County, California, Nexus was founded in 2016 and is a portfolio company of the PE firm TA Associates.
Nexus struggled with an unwieldy tech stack, using more than a dozen systems including Microsoft Dynamics GP, QuickBooks and best-of-breed applications carried over from acquired companies. Challenges with financial reporting consolidation and operational inefficiencies prompted Nexus to shift to a more unified and streamlined environment anchored by NetSuite, implemented by Bryant Park Consulting in a phased rollout across Nexus brands.
With multiple brands under one NetSuite account, Nexus has improved speed and accuracy of financial reporting consolidation to Nexus executives and TA Associates while increasing efficiency across the organization. Custom scripting by Bryant Park automated what were time-consuming manual processes, and also prevented proprietary information from appearing in customer-facing estimates. Going forward, Nexus is able to quickly integrate newly acquired companies under the NetSuite umbrella, accelerating value and increasing EBITDA.
Customer: Pathful
Rapid Implementation—High Tech Spotlight Award Winner: Plative
Pathful is a leader in education technology with SaaS solutions that help students improve college and career readiness and allow teachers and administrators to assess and optimize readiness initiatives. The North Carolina-based company was created in a 2022 merger of Nepris and Virtual Job Shadow, and is backed by the PE firm PSG Equity.
The merger left the newly minted Pathful with separate sets of data and applications, including QuickBooks and Zoho. PSG Equity and Pathful leadership knew the fragmented landscape would result in efficiency, visibility, and customer experience problems that could hinder growth and profitability. Pathful charted a new path by selecting NetSuite to create a single, seamless environment, with a rapid implementation by Plative.
With NetSuite, Pathful has a centralized system to handle accounting, automate billing, manage deferred revenue, and equip sales teams to bundle and upsell complementary products. Plative’s proprietary connector for NetSuite and Salesforce CRM/CPQ streamlines data exchange and speeds up order-to-cash cycles. The company has shortened its period-end financial close and has key metrics to support data-driven decisions, all while profitability has increased substantially.
“It’s all about data. We’ve made it over the hump," said Mark Fry, SVP of operations at Pathful. “We now have one source of truth and that really allows us to set ourselves up for not only what do we need right now but what will help us grow.”
Customer: Elite
Rapid Implementation—Services Spotlight Award Winner: Riveron
Founded in 1947, Elite provides financial and business management solutions that help the world’s most successful law firms run smoothly, including more than 75% of the Am Law 200 and 80% of the Global 200. After 20 years as a Thomson Reuters subsidiary, the global company became an independent business in June 2023 following a carve-out and acquisition by PE firm TPG.
Facing a deadline to migrate off its former parent’s legacy SAP ERP platform, Elite turned to NetSuite based on successful implementations at other TPG portfolio companies. Implementation partner Riveron guided Elite’s decision-makers on strategic direction and took a rapid, phased deployment approach that leveraged NetSuite’s extensive out-of-the-box functionality.
Since go-live, Elite has streamlined processes while eliminating cumbersome tasks around plugging into a parent company’s ERP. Accounts payable and procure-to-pay functions have been simplified, and leadership can now track and analyze timely, accurate information to support informed decision-making. The company quickly achieved its desired stability and is now positioned to continue building out its NetSuite environment by using additional capabilities like planning and budgeting and integrating with third-party applications including Salesforce and Kantata to allow for future automation.
“Riveron is the leading choice by far across the implementation partners we have worked with—out of more than a dozen,” It differentiates itself in its ability to partner with the customer to navigate towards outcomes while driving excellent project communication in a challenging set of circumstances” said Lindsey Moorley, Elite’s CFO. “I often discuss the success of our NetSuite implementation to our private equity sponsors and broader CFO ecosystem.”
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