Enabling Growth With a Stronger Operating Model

After being acquired by two prominent private equity firms, a leading provider of property data and analytics sought to accelerate its growth trajectory and unlock new value for its people, partners and customers. Achieving this next level of growth would require a modernized, streamlined operating model that simplified areas of complexity the company had developed over time. Based on the enthusiastic referral of another investor, the business and its owners engaged FCM to help drive its transformation. In a 24-month partnership, we generated over $2B in enterprise value while equipping the company to thrive in a challenging market.

Approach

Operations

One of the firm’s most significant opportunities was bringing together its decentralized Operations capabilities to leverage scale and create the foundation for continued growth. Its existing structure embedded operational associates, from data analysts to customer support teams, alongside sales and product associates in massive business units. Without a central Operations organization to coordinate across the enterprise, there were more quality escapes, slower cycle times and higher costs than necessary. FCM directed the carve-out of these 1,300 global operations resources from the business units and consolidated them into a new Enterprise Operations Group. A veteran executive from our team launched the function and guided its transition as interim Chief Operating Officer (COO), ensuring stability and continuity.

The Enterprise Operations Group was comprised of five Centers of Excellence (COEs) that provided shared services to the rest of the business, driving standardized best practices and focused accountability in Production and Delivery, Customer Support, Client Onboarding, Revenue Operations and Vendor Management. We partnered with leadership to establish a vision for the function, streamline managerial layers, realign resources, improve workflows with automation and institute performance metrics. With some of the cost savings these improvements generated, the firm reinvested in new operational capabilities, like a Performance Excellence group, and enhanced leadership positions.

The potential for stronger career pathways within a dedicated, industry-leading team enabled the business to attract the best operations talent. Establishing this solid operational backbone also positioned the company to enhance client delivery and improve retention. Moreover, it set the business on a path to grow profitably at scale, allowing for more efficient resource deployment, greater capacity for innovation, quicker integration of future acquisitions and more productive use of investment dollars.

“FCM was exactly the partner we needed to support [our] transformation. Your executives helped launch new organizations and reimagine our operating model while creating value that allowed us to invest in our future.”

PORTFOLIO COMPANY CEO

Business Units

In conjunction with building out Operations, we helped reframe the company’s siloed go-to-market organization, which had been effective in its earlier stages of growth through acquisition, but could better serve the business as an integrated function going forward. The existing structure organized teams into two large product-focused business units (BUs), each containing dozens of standalone client offerings that operated largely as independent lines of business. This setup was challenging for clients to understand, and it diluted responsibility for strategy and financial results across multiple Product General Manager roles.

The reimagined structure included four BUs, each with an integrated product suite designed to meet specific customer needs and enable the smooth combination of products for better cross-selling. The new BUs housed focused Sales, Product Strategy, Solution Engineering and Product Marketing teams, while all other supporting work was moved to its appropriate functional home. Shifting to these client-centric segments enabled the business to be more responsive to customer needs while elevating profit-and-loss (P&L) visibility and responsibility to the senior leadership level.

Technology

The Technology function had similar organizational opportunities to Operations, with many technical resources embedded in other teams and fragmented technology strategies, processes, systems and applications across the business. FCM helped restructure the organization to include all “shadow” technical resources from other teams, growing its scope to provide shared services for the entire enterprise. One of our seasoned Chief Information Officers (CIOs) supported the company’s emerging CIO with hands-on mentorship to lead in this expanded role.

We also led several initiatives to ensure the success of the fully integrated Technology function, including establishing an enterprise-wide demand management process. This enabled the prioritization of technology investments across the enterprise, ensuring alignment with the company’s strategic goals and operational needs while facilitating a more strategic roadmap that decreased “technology debt.” We also led initiatives that rearchitected and modernized the global network, migrated 1,200 cloud applications to a new orchestration platform, and optimized compute and storage resources across multiple cloud providers. As a result of these structural and operational improvements, the company reduced its technology-related costs by $60M and was able to reinvest in upgrading technical talent with new cloud engineering and platform services roles. Beyond achieving targeted efficiency improvements, our partnership created a more robust technical foundation to support future growth.

“[FCM Leader] has been a terrific and tireless partner and I consider him an extension of my team. His charisma and positive attitude are appreciated, and he always jumps in and gets the right stuff done.”

PORTFOLIO COMPANY CIO

Sourcing

With numerous non-strategic vendors engaged, the business had an opportunity to leverage its size as an advantage in sourcing. FCM partnered with the Procurement organization to consolidate its supplier landscape to fewer, more productive vendor relationships by renegotiating contracts, combining providers and right-sizing service levels. We supported the company in negotiating a long-term agreement with its largest supplier, a global business process and information technology outsourcing (BPO/ITO) firm. By combining work from smaller providers and new support areas in a single preferred partnership, the business secured a 13.6% lower rate.

We also helped establish strategic sourcing tools and vendor management frameworks to drive ongoing productivity. As part of this work, FCM led a wellness program to improve the performance of the company’s call center vendor, whose delivery was below expectations. By analyzing the root causes of each issue, implementing more robust training and instituting governance mechanisms, we drove a 12-point quality improvement that allowed the business to be confident in further engaging third parties.

Location Strategy

Building on its revitalized supplier quality and strengthened BPO/ITO partnership, FCM led the business in enhancing workforce flexibility and cost-effectiveness by increasing its use of global talent. We helped each function create a location strategy that distinguished its enabling activities, which were ideal candidates for the global partner to support, from its differentiating activities that should be retained in-house. For every activity transferred to the partner, FCM facilitated a disciplined “pitcher-catcher” transition to ensure quality and minimize disruption. The company successfully increased its leverage of global talent across all functions, growing from 52% to 68% in Operations alone. Moving enabling tasks to third-party specialists allowed in-house teams to focus on what they did best while providing access to diverse talent that could scale up and down quickly in alignment with business growth.

Impact

This portfolio company decreased annual costs by 14%, significantly exceeding its original savings goal. Equally important, the company upgraded its siloed business units to an integrated structure focused on enhancing client delivery and leveraging scale for growth. When market headwinds hit the real estate industry, it was poised to weather the storm with $50M of in-year savings on hand and the ability to continue investing and acquiring during a period when its competitors simply tried to stay afloat. FCM’s proven methodology for optimizing complex data- and technology-centric businesses positioned the firm to better support clients and employees, capitalize on market opportunities, and deliver positive financial results into the future.