Chief Financial Officer I Global Leader in Software Products
Successful execution of a high-profile CFO position at a SaaS company that had IPO plans.
Background
Our client was a leading SaaS solutions provider to the travel industry globally, managing mission-critical operations for clients in the aviation, tour and cruise, and hospitality industries. They also ran a real-time B2B and B2C distribution platform providing hotel room inventory, rates, and availability to a global network of hospitality companies and channels. Headquartered in India, they operated from 11 offices across the world and were backed by a global private equity major.
The Need
Our client were seeking to bring in a Chief Financial Officer to replace the incumbent who had moved on. Among the key competencies required were a good grip on SaaS business models, detailed knowledge of the industry landscape of global software products, ability to align with business and, preferably, an understanding of taking a company public as our client were planning to launch an IPO in a couple of years.
Our Search Process
We were clear that we were looking for accomplished finance leaders from India-headquartered global software product companies who had been in business for a while and had been transitioning from on-prem to SaaS business models. Candidates who had run the finance function for the Indian operations of companies headquartered elsewhere were not preferred as they would not have independently taken key strategic decisions with company-wide impact, as those organizations had likely kept those decisions with the global finance leader. An additional criterion we adopted was to target companies who were either already publicly traded or were planning to go public soon.
After an extensive research effort we were able to shortlist three candidates who were good matches, and the client interviewed who they felt on paper was the best of the three. After an interview process that involved multiple stakeholders, including the board representative from the private equity investor, a plan presentation on how the candidate would support their business growth objectives and maximize valuations for the planned IPO was delivered, and the client offered the position to the chosen candidate.
Our NGS Global Value-Add
• Execution led by a Partner that meant only high quality candidates were targeted after focused research that targeted the most relevant companies.
• Influencing the limited pool of candidates that were available, to consider our client as their next career destination, based on the client’s leadership position in the market and their IPO plans.
• Thorough due diligence, including confidential reference checks run by a Partner, that was intended to uncover strong points and areas of improvement with regards to the chosen candidate, thereby reducing the hiring risk.
Contact Soumitra Agarwal (Project Head)
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