2023 Pacific Lake Conference: Building Enterprise Value
Building Enterprise Value at Datacor
Tom Jackson, President and Andy Ballard, Director
Datacor is a leading provider of software solutions to the process manufacturing space. In a discussion led by Pacific Lake’s Keith Gross, Tom Jackson (President) and Andy Ballard (Board Director) shared key strategies they’ve employed to achieve organic and inorganic growth at Datacor.
Know your customers and deeply understand their use cases for your product: Early on, Tom and Clayton (Datacor VP) spent time walking the floor with customers and really understanding how customers used software. In turn, this has allowed Tom and Clayton to have thoughtful conversations with the board on a long-term oriented vision, pursuing projects that may have enormous payback but require a multi-year investment period. It has also informed their buy-vs.-build strategy, focusing on buying unique assets that are highly differentiated for their customers, while building and partnering with others on more commodity offerings.
Focus on net retention as a core tenant of the M&A strategy: Gross retention is challenging to improve. Buy high quality assets where the product is sticky and mission critical to customers.
Price your product with an understanding of the value you provide: Empower account teams to engage with customers year-on-year and confidently articulate the value that the product brings, particularly when pushing through a price increase.
Want more 2023 Pacific Lake Conference highlights? Find additional CEO lessons here from our four part series: Navigating the Seas of Talent Strategy and Optimization at Predictive Index, Scaling The Team For Growth at Banyan Software and Getting Value From Customer Partnerships at HigherMe and Eleven Software.
