Software Strategy Consulting Services

Our market-leading software M&A diligence engagements include providing guidance on competitive and market trends, market size and growth, product capabilities, go-forward product roadmap, underlying technical architecture, and software R&D organization. We support our clients to understand a software company’s ability to execute against its corporate strategy while also identifying opportunities and risks. We work with clients to answer the following questions:

• Technology assessment: Is the software company’s product portfolio, as well as the R&D team, built to support our client’s investment thesis (e.g., market share growth, new market entry, changing market dynamics, future M&A)?
• Product ecosystem: How does the company’s product capabilities and technology compare to those of competitors? How is the space evolving, and how are customers and vendors responding to this? What is the company’s key value proposition?
• Commercial assessment: What is the software company’s total addressable market and serviceable market? How is the serviceable market segmented? How do customers in this market perceive the product capabilities of the various players in this market? How do users decide to purchase a solution?

Many senior leaders of software companies choose us to help solve their biggest challenges, including identifying how to make their organizations more effective and how to uncover opportunities for future expansion and growth. Our value creation engagements often focus on growth strategy, product and technology roadmap strategy, software R&D organization improvement, and building a go-forward product portfolio and organizational approach after a client has undertaken a major acquisition or merger.

The challenge

The CEO of a software company was frustrated over a lack of insight into his R&D organization, calling it an impenetrable “black box.” The company had a large product portfolio but lacked go-to-market know-how, a strategic product roadmap and a way to measure R&D.

The solution

• Leveraging its extensive software CTO and chief product officer experience, the SSG team developed a methodology to measure R&D performance from initial roadmap planning through to post-release customer support.
• The team also designed a model for product governance and portfolio structuring that could be used for business planning, organizational design and go-to-market activities.

The outcome

• The CEO and Board of Directors gained a better understanding of how to measure the performance of the company’s R&D organization and other functions.
• The company reorganized its business units, empowering teams to make faster decisions.

Client challenge

A century-old industrial company was losing customers to competitors selling software that could better track machinery health and inventory. The company quickly needed new software that could ingest data from many sources to help customers predict when machinery needed maintenance.

How we helped

The company acquired a cloud-based software business. EY-Parthenon teams determined the existing software platform was beyond repair and that “building” it in-house would take too long. The R&D team was also not up-to-speed on the modern programming languages needed to create a new platform.

Client benefits

• Revenue doubled, the company expanded to multiple countries in Asia and the acquisition was completed within a year.

Executives also started raising technical issues to leadership sooner, helping the company to better serve customers.