Advice to the Vista Equity Partners Portfolio: How Enterprise Software Leaders Can Understand and Implement Key Priorities

Continued high interest rates, inflation, spend-conscious customers and persistent market uncertainty have created a challenging environment for executives.

Here are the levers we believe software executives should pull across their organization to meet the changing needs of today’s businesses and to ensure all teams are marching towards the same goal.

Product and Technology: Deliver on the Promise of Generative AI

Generative AI has the potential to fundamentally transform businesses. To capitalize on its value, organizations should bridge the gap from believing in the promise of AI, to delivering on it. To accomplish this, Product and Technology teams should:

• Capitalize on Near-Term Opportunities: By applying generative AI to software development, product teams may experience significant productivity gains. This includes using AI to automate repetitive tasks such as refactoring code, as well as enabling the creation of more bespoke internal tools and scripts.
• Foster Innovation: Hackathons offer a unique opportunity to overcome complacency and drive innovation. Tap into these events to deliver rapid prototyping, breakthrough solutions and team synergy.
• Optimize Impact: Embrace a disciplined product discovery strategy to ensure you are building the right AI solution that solves actual customer problems.
• Befriend Cyber and Legal Teams: Collaboration and communication are the keys to success. When working together, cybersecurity and legal teams can serve as accelerators to AI adoption and roll out, rather than inhibitors. Be sure they are brought along on the journey.
• Maintain Momentum: Continue marching toward full deployment and take advantage of your competitors’ potential slow down.

The opportunities presented by generative AI are not limited to Product and Technology teams. Go-To-Market teams can successfully incorporate generative AI solutions into the funnel by carefully evaluating vendors, piloting projects and iterating based on results. Operational teams can incorporate AI tools into their workflow to drive efficiency and improve productivity.

Go-To-Market: Evolve Your Strategy for Profitable Growth

With profitable growth a priority, software businesses should focus their Go-To-Market strategy on these four key areas:

• Target: Understand how to target resources to more effectively reach the strategic segments, accounts and buyers most likely to bear fruit. Be specific and aligned across the team on what a high-propensity prospect looks like. We believe companies who do this well will drive higher converting pipelines and reduce customer acquisition costs.
• Value: Remember that customers buy to achieve outcomes. Have a well-defined perspective on the urgent problems you solve, the ROI of solving those problems, the measurable outcomes you deliver and how you do it better than competitors.
• Unify: Today’s buyers no longer adhere to the traditional linear buyer’s journey. As companies work to attract and engage customers across different stages, it’s important to align marketing, sales and customer operations teams around shared goals, metrics and processes to improve overall results.
• Transform: Adopt a model focused on people, processes and technology, and leverage data-driven insights to drive collaboration and alignment.

Driving profitable growth is not the responsibility of Go-To-Market teams alone. Product and Technology teams can move the needle by developing market-leading products that customers love and collaborating to establish an optimal pricing strategy while focusing on efficiency to lower development costs.

Operations: Drive Organizational Transformation Through Operational Excellence

Core business functions like Operations, Finance, Accounting, Talent, Legal and Compliance have the power to drive efficiency, resiliency and transformation across the organization. To tap into this potential and move the overall business strategy forward teams should:

• Adjust to Changing Market Dynamics: To support the efforts of Go-To-Market teams and achieve profitable growth, operations teams should focus on key drivers like growing recurring revenue, disciplined spending and timely reporting. Prioritize initiatives that will maximize impact while creating efficiencies to drive bottom-line savings.
• Enable Resiliency and Innovation by Embracing Generative AI: Legal and Compliance teams can prepare for generative AI by partnering with development and cybersecurity teams to enable the business while managing risks. Teams should promote the safe use of AI, remain flexible and prepare for changes. Don’t forget to stay aligned with all functions of the business to understand their needs and help enable their goals.
• Design an Intentional Workforce Strategy: Create a repeatable, scalable talent engine that incorporates new skills and technologies. Tap into global talent pools and maintain alignment to build high-performing teams capable of adapting to changing market conditions.

Teams throughout the business, including Go-To-Market and Product and Technology, hold the potential to build a more efficient engine by maximizing resource potential and productivity.

Software remains the largest and fastest growing sector in the global economy¹. At Vista, we believe well-led and well-run teams are critical to the success of enterprise software companies, as is a commitment to innovate, adapt and execute efficiently. By focusing on these levers, leaders can help drive profitable and sustainable growth in their businesses to create market leadership.