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Prequel Advisory helps companies ensure that each phase of the M&A process—from strategy to execution—drives lasting value. BLOG Beyond Growth: How M&A Can Solve Your Biggest Product Challenges In today’s environment of rising tariffs and shifting trade policies, traditional growth strategies are under pressure. Achieving sustainable growth and defending market share now demands more than competitive analysis and long-term planning. Companies must find faster, more flexible ways to respond to disruption. While M&A has historically been used to drive top-line growth and market expansion, a growing number of companies are now leveraging it as a strategic problem-solving tool—helping to fill product gaps, accelerate development, bring in specialized talent, and reduce time to market in the face of mounting uncertainty. “M&A strategy is a nuanced and complex discipline. It involves acquiring or merging with another company to achieve strategic objectives like growth, diversification, or cost reduction. The strategic fit between the acquirer and the target company is a critical aspect of M&A strategy.” Institute of Mergers and Acquisitions Utilizing M&A to Streamline Costs and Strengthen Platforms Nearly every established software company faces the challenging issue of defending against new market entrants. These newcomers often exhibit agile, entrepreneurial approaches that attract potential clients with sleek user interfaces, rapid iterations, and disruptive mindsets. As incumbent solution providers observe the market's response to these emerging disruptors, they begin to scrutinize their own platforms, questioning why their development processes are comparatively slower. The reasons typically include outdated codebases, intricate business rules, and the extensive size of their code and customer bases, all of which hinder agility. Could introducing a new feature set be the answer? Instead of tasking an existing team with modernization efforts, there's the option to acquire a ready-built solution. The focus then shifts to smart integration and positioning; when executed effectively, this approach simplifies the integration process and more importantly, accelerates it. This perspective offers a fresh approach to two core aspects: new products and new talent. Making the Right Strategic Choice: Build, Buy, or Partner? A fundamental question for companies aiming to scale their products and outpace competitors is whether to build in-house solutions, acquire existing ones, or form partnerships. This decision—build, buy, or partner—is pivotal. Often, organizational culture influences this choice, with preferences rooted in history, pride, or caution toward unfamiliar approaches. Surprisingly, such decisions are sometimes made early with minimal analysis and limited objective modeling of alternatives. Best practices suggest maintaining an ongoing Build/Buy/Partner analysis encompassing all core components of market and product strategies. This analysis should be updated as markets evolve, new business needs arise, and emerging technologies and players enter the scene. When an opportunity aligns with business needs, it's prudent to model the options against each other. This cross-functional decision shouldn't be led solely by Product and Development teams; factors like time-to-market and revenue growth often play significant roles. In some cases, initiating a re-platforming project leads to escalating costs and timelines. Even with a defined development path, transitioning customers from old to new platforms remains challenging. To enhance agility and success, acquiring add-ons, purchasing new front-end solutions, or building integrative modules may offer more flexible pathways to re-platforming, especially with today's service-driven development and integration hubs. CASE STUDY At Prequel Advisory, we believe that growth isn’t just about making the right moves—it’s about making them at the right time and with the right strategy. Our approach to evaluating whether to build, buy, or partner goes beyond traditional decision-making frameworks. The Prequel Method™ ensures that every decision aligns with long-term value creation, risk mitigation, and competitive advantage. When considering your next strategic move, ask these critical questions: What are your strategic objectives ? Clarify the specific goals you aim to achieve, such as entering new markets, enhancing technological capabilities, or improving operational efficiency. Do you have the necessary internal capabilities ? Assess your organization's current skills, resources, and expertise to determine if you can develop the solution internally or if external assistance is required. What is the urgency of the solution ? Evaluate the time constraints and market demands to decide if building internally aligns with your timeline or if acquiring or partnering offers a faster route to market. How does each option impact your cost structure ? Model the financial implications of building, buying, or partnering, including initial investments, ongoing operational costs, and potential return on investment. What are the risks and benefits associated with each approach ? Identify potential challenges and advantages of each option, such as integration complexities, cultural alignment with partners, or dependency on external vendors. How will this decision affect your competitive position ? Consider how the chosen approach will influence your market standing, customer perceptions, and ability to differentiate from competitors. The Prequel Method provides a structured yet flexible way to navigate these complex choices. By applying our expertise in market dynamics and operational execution, we help organizations turn uncertainty into a strategic advantage—maximizing the impact of every investment. Aqui-hiring Accelerates Growth As companies observe new entrants, competitors, and emerging technologies, they often grapple with adapting their platforms and teams to match the agility of innovative startups. This challenge can feel like attempting to revert to their own startup days. In such scenarios, the true value of an acquisition may lie not just in the company's products but in its team and culture. Acqui-hiring—acquiring a company primarily for its talent—offers a swift method to establish new features, business units, or teams. While this approach might involve paying substantial premiums due to the value of obtaining agile talent and modern skillsets, these investments can accelerate growth and yield significant returns when considering reduced ramp-up times and expedited market entry. The key to success is effectively integrating the new team to maintain their productivity and ensuring a clear plan for their development and scaling within the organization. “We have never once bought a company for the company. We buy companies for excellent people.” Mark Zuckerburg CEO, Chairman, and Founder of Meta Platforms M&A Success Starts Before the Deal Acquisitions are more than just growth accelerators—they are strategic tools for enhancing product value and securing market share. Successful M&A requires a proactive approach, where both pre-merger intelligence and post-merger integration are given equal weight. The key is to: Continuously assess your needs Think both tactically and strategically Evaluate Build/Buy/Partner options Plan integration activities well in advance Prequel Advisory helps companies navigate these complexities, ensuring that each phase of the M&A process—from strategy to execution—drives lasting value. 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CASE STUDY Middle-Market HCM SaaS Platform Leading the integration process of two HCM Software providers, creating a combined entity that resulted in a strategic exit. Challenge Combining forces to improve competitive position The goal of the engagement was to improve the company's competitive position by extending its existing payroll platform to a broader HCM offering that would include Onboarding, Employee Engagement, Performance Management, Learning Management, and Applicant Tracking. Extending the offering and positioning the company as a mid-market HCM provider opened up both white space and greenfield opportunities for growth while also expanding exit options. Before we could capitalize on the possibilities of this merger plan we had to address strategic operational and organizational challenges in the business: Integrating two vastly different technology platforms that supported unique customer value propositions and ICPs. Repackaging and repositioning the product and aligning the roadmap and development resources accordingly. Redefining the customer experience to reduce costs and gain efficiencies, including improving the implementation and support processes. Combining two completely different cultures with a focus on improving engagement and retention. Evaluating and aligning go-to-market teams and plans in order to minimize negative impact on revenue. With our team of operational leaders, we took a multi-faceted approach that focused on the successful integration of technology, product strategy, customer experience, culture, communications, and go-to-market strategy. Solution Deep operational experience drove rapid return on investment goals Technology Delivering a combined product platform that would contribute to market expansion and innovation potential was critical to synergy realization. We helped the investor find the right partner prior to the due diligence process. Once the acquisition was complete, we phased into the technology integration. Read more Product Strategy During the merger and acquisition process, we integrated the offerings and created packages that aligned with market needs. We also created a solid product roadmap for the new g rowth platform, setting a clear direction for the newly formed entity. Read more Customer Experience As the platform and product strategies evolved, it was critical to align the customer experience to a more structured, packaged approach that would reduc e costs and gain efficiencies, while removing duplication o f effort. Read more Culture & Communication Properly integrating two distinct corporate cultures during the acquisition was a key factor in mitigating risk and ultimately achieving the goals set forth in the investment thesis. Read more Go-to-Market The go-to-market strategy was an important function to address early in the integration process to avoid a negative impact on revenue. There were four areas of focus - sales & marketing teams, market position/brand, marketing plan and activities, and the tech stack. R ead more Results Realizing investment goals The goals of the investment thesis were realized as the two organizations were successfully merged. Created a profitable foundation for growth resulting in a $6M+ EBITDA improvement in 24 months. Executed platform investments that Improved customer retention by 51%. Created aligned Customer Success strategy improving customer health by 40% and reducing ticket volume by more than 20%. Led the IMO through successful acquisition, on time, and meeting desired goals. Honed culture of engagement and improved employee engagement scores while driving radical change. Launched an online client communication center enabling agile transformation messaging.

Meet the Team Expertise. Passion. Results. Prequel consultants are senior-level professionals with at least 20 years of experience working with technology organizations and their Private Equity and Venture Capital investors. Our consultants bring strategic, operational, and managerial insight, helping to optimize business operations and realize integration synergies in portfolio companies. Susanne Bowen Founder & CEO Susanne is a veteran CEO, industry leader, and board director in the software industry. She has led five enterprise SaaS companies as CEO and has served on public, private, and professional association boards, contributing expertise in growth strategies, operational effectiveness, and organizational health. Michelle Lanter Smith Go-to-Market Michelle is a go-to-market B2B SaaS Executive with a track record of scaling mid-market software/services firms and emerging startups through innovative product expansion and aggressive market penetration. She is an expert in building and managing GTM strategies for the full customer lifecycle and has led GTM and operations teams globally for PE-backed companies. Robin Vandeveer Customer Operations Robin is a senior operations leader with 30 years of experience in the software industry. She is expert at leading organizational change, mentoring team members, and driving operational excellence. She has effectively led transitions and managed service team transformation in companies of all sizes representing multiple verticals. Roland Tanner Product Strategy Roland is a senior professional with 30+ years of leadership experience in technology companies primarily in CTO and CPO roles, both interim and long-term. He also serves on several boards for software companies, contributing to company efficiency, growth, and value. John Whisner Revenue John is a senior sales and revenue leader with 30 years of experience building high-velocity sales and account management teams in a variety of verticals. For nearly 15 years, John has worked with PE-backed organizations to lead and execute go-to-market strategies that accelerate revenue growth, increase enterprise value, and lead to successful exits. Sara Haynes Product Marketing Sara has 20+ years of experience in B2B SaaS product management. As both an operational leader and a consultant, Sara has helped guide numerous product teams at PE-backed organizations through transition. She helps organizations mature their product management practices, driving growth and scalability through operational efficiency. Ellen Madonia Marketing Ellen has 30 years of executive experience working in technology companies through all stages of the investment lifecycle. She has successfully developed and executed communications and go-to-market strategies that meet the organization’s objectives and align with investment and transformation goals.

Prequel Advisory’s comprehensive Customer Experience Assessment helps identify gaps and the most impactful opportunities for rapidly improving retention and Net Revenue Retention (NRR), ensuring your strategies are aligned for long-term success. BLOG Four Winning Strategies for Boosting Retention and NRR As organizations plan for next year, economic challenges such as inflation and slower growth remain uncertain due to the impact of the incoming administration and potential trade tariff policies. In response, companies are continuing to shift their focus from customer acquisition to maximizing the value of their existing customer base. With acquisition costs rising and returns steadily declining, improving retention and Lifetime Value (LTV) have become essential strategies for driving sustainable, long-term growth. To navigate these challenges and unlock the full potential of existing customers, organizations must adopt the right mindset and approach. In this blog, we’ll explore four winning strategies for boosting retention and Net Revenue Retention (NRR)—must-do approaches that forward-thinking companies use to optimize customer revenue and stay ahead of the curve. 1. Building a Growth-Focused Customer Success Function According to Survey Sparrow’s State of Customer Success Report, 37% of companies do not have a clearly defined customer success strategy. This highlights a crucial gap in the customer experience and creates an opportunity for organizations to develop a more intentional approach to customer success, focused on building relationships that facilitate adoption and drive long-term value. Step 1: Understand Customer Needs and Priorities The foundation of any effective customer success function starts with a deep understanding of your customers’ needs, goals, and priorities at every stage of their journey. Use tools like informal surveys, quarterly business reviews (QBRs), and direct conversations to gain insights into what matters most to your customers. These interactions provide clarity on how your product or service can best support its objectives and create the foundation for building a growth strategy. Step 2: Define Roles and Build the Team With customer needs and priorities clearly defined, the next step is to establish a dedicated Customer Success Management (CSM) function. This team should be comprised of individuals who not only have a deep understanding of your product but are also aligned with your customer's objectives. The CSM function is responsible for guiding customers through the adoption process, ensuring they reach key milestones, and continually helping them find new ways to engage with and benefit from your offerings. The CSM function plays a critical role in customer retention and driving revenue growth by identifying opportunities to expand services within existing accounts. Through proactive upselling, cross-selling, and recommending additional features or solutions, the CSM team can help customers unlock even more value, further solidifying their loyalty and maximizing lifetime value (LTV). By focusing on adoption, retention, and expansion within accounts, the CSM function becomes a key driver of both customer satisfaction and business growth. Mid-market SaaS companies should determine the number of customers a CSM can manage by considering a blend of factors, including the complexity of the product, the level of support required by customers, and the desired outcomes for retention and growth. A high-touch model, where CSMs provide personalized support, typically means fewer accounts per CSM (e.g., 10–50), while a tech-touch model focused on automation allows a higher ratio (e.g., 100–300). Step 3: Continuously Measure Success and Adapt Once the CSM team is established, their role should go beyond ensuring product adoption—they must be agile and proactive in responding to evolving customer needs and market dynamics. A key way to measure adoption is through tracking product usage stats, such as daily or monthly active users, feature adoption rates, and usage frequency, which help identify trends in how customers interact with the product. In addition to usage data, the CSM team should continuously monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) like customer satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), churn rate, and Lifetime Value (LTV) to identify at-risk customers and evaluate the long-term profitability of accounts. Metrics such as Customer Health Scores, which combine usage, engagement, and support data, and Time to Value (TTV), which measures how quickly customers realize benefits, can also provide valuable insights. These metrics help the team stay alert to emerging issues, uncover opportunities for upsells or cross-sells, and ensure alignment with customer needs, fostering retention and growth. A successful adoption-focused customer success function does more than ensure customers are satisfied; it fosters deep, ongoing engagement that drives continuous product use, retention, and expansion, all of which contribute to sustainable, long-term growth. Forrester reports a 5% increase in retention rates can lead to a 25% increase in profitability -- and that a well-designed customer success program can yield a 91% ROI in 3 years. 2. Creating a Customer-First Mindset Through Open Communication Building meaningful relationships with customers involves fostering open lines of communication about their product experience, and service quality. Implementing feedback mechanisms both within your platform and through external opportunities is essential. Integrating feedback options directly into the product—such as in-app surveys and quick feedback buttons—allows users to share their insights in real time. This creates a seamless channel for gathering valuable data that can inform product enhancements. Additionally, establishing opportunities outside the platform, like user focus groups and customer advisory councils, encourages customers to share their experiences in a collaborative environment. These forums not only help gather qualitative insights but also enable customer-facing teams to detect trends in customer needs, such as requests for new functionalities or challenges with existing features. Understanding why customers require specific functionality is crucial for delivering feedback to the product team that addresses broader business needs, not just small issues. Ongoing feedback from teams like sales, support, and customer success is essential for bridging the gap between customer experiences and product development. By looking at trends, understanding the reasons behind customer pain points, and relaying this feedback to the product team, you can ensure that the product evolves in ways that meet the real-world demands of your customers. A structured process for integrating this feedback helps drive product improvements that enhance satisfaction, foster loyalty, and build stronger relationships with your brand. According to Capgemini, companies with a customer-first mindset experience up to 60% higher revenue growth compared to those who do not prioritize customer needs. 3. Leveraging Tech and AI to Elevate the Customer Experience Failing to stay on top of the ever-changing tech landscape can put your organization at risk. By utilizing modern CRMs, advanced customer success platforms, and AI tools, businesses can better understand customer behaviors, preferences, and pain points—enabling them to deliver tailored experiences that foster long-term loyalty and drive growth. Customer success platforms, like Gainsight, consolidate and analyze vast amounts of data, giving organizations valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. This enables businesses to design personalized communication strategies that resonate with different customer segments. For example, if a customer frequently uses certain features, automated systems can proactively send targeted resources or tips, deepening their engagement. AI tools further elevate the customer experience by automating routine tasks and generating valuable insights. AI-powered chatbots, for instance, can handle common inquiries 24/7, freeing up human agents to tackle more complex issues. These chatbots learn from customer interactions, improving response times and overall satisfaction. Additionally, AI can analyze real-time customer sentiment, alerting companies to dissatisfaction before issues escalate, allowing for quicker resolutions. A great example of how tech can transform customer success is a project we recently worked on with a client. We helped them implement a real-time customer health scorecard, which continuously tracks key engagement metrics like product usage, feature adoption, and sentiment analysis. By pulling data from various systems and touchpoints the scorecard assigns a health score to each customer, helping the client assess the likelihood of renewal or expansion. This proactive approach ensures that at-risk accounts are identified early, allowing the team to intervene before churn occurs. SuperOffice research states that only 7% of companies actively track their customer health scores, creating significant risk and potential for negative revenue impact. 4. Educating, Engaging, and Expanding: the Keys to Adoption and Retention Customer adoption is the cornerstone of retention and growth. By providing customers with the tools and resources they need to succeed, you enhance their experience and build stronger relationships that lead to long-term loyalty. One effective strategy is hosting regular user group meetings and fostering collaborative online communities. These forums enable customers to share insights, troubleshoot challenges, and learn best practices from peers who understand their needs. Because customers often have unique subject matter expertise, their contributions carry credibility and inspire others to take full advantage of your product. Additionally, accessible educational content, like step-by-step user guides, in-app tutorials, and instructional videos, empowers customers to get the most out of your product. These resources drive feature adoption and reduce reliance on support teams by equipping customers to resolve common issues independently. For example, at PeopleAdmin, we tailored content to each client’s specific needs, significantly improving adoption rates and reducing support requests. By focusing on these foundational adoption strategies, businesses can create a more engaged, loyal customer base, paving the way for long-term retention and organic growth. Once a strong adoption foundation is in place, the next step is to drive additional value through upselling and cross-selling. These strategies are essential for growing Net Revenue Retention (NRR) by introducing customers to new features, add-ons, or complementary products that align with their evolving needs. However, success in this area hinges on a seamless collaboration between the customer success (CS) and customer marketing teams. Customer marketing plays a critical role in building awareness and educating customers about the benefits of new offerings. Through targeted campaigns—like email promotions, webinars, or feature highlights—marketing teams can generate initial interest and nurture leads. But this is only part of the equation. The customer success team must take the baton, incorporating these insights into their regular customer calls and QBRs to have more personalized, value-driven conversations about the new offerings. For instance, if customer marketing rolls out a campaign about a new analytics dashboard, the CS team should leverage that momentum by discussing how the feature fits into the customer’s goals during their next touchpoint. Together, these teams can craft a cohesive strategy that ensures customers are not only aware of the new opportunities but also understand how they add value to their specific workflows. When executed collaboratively, these efforts not only increase the adoption of new features but also strengthen customer relationships by reinforcing your brand's commitment to delivering continuous value. This alignment ultimately drives higher retention and accelerates revenue growth. Take the Next Steps to Drive Customer Growth In today’s economic climate, focusing on customer retention and LTV is the key to resilient growth. Acquiring new customers will always be important, but retaining and growing existing customers is what separates sustainable companies from those struggling to maintain profitability. By investing in long-term relationships, organizations can weather the storm and emerge stronger. What actions can you take to elevate your customer experience strategy? Prequel Advisory’s comprehensive Customer Experience Assessment helps identify gaps and the most impactful opportunities for rapidly improving retention and Net Revenue Retention (NRR), ensuring your strategies are aligned for long-term success. Take our Online Assessment or Contact us to schedule a discovery call.

CASE STUDY Middle-Market HCM SaaS Platform Leading the integration process of two HCM Software providers, creating a combined entity that resulted in a strategic exit . Customer Experience Making improvements across all customer touchpoints As the platform and product strategies evolved, it was critical to align the customer experience to a more structured, packaged approach that would reduc e costs and gain efficiencies, while removing duplication o f effort. Customer Support We took the initial step of assessing talent and skills with the goal of combining the support teams into one and training them to field questions on the end-to-end solution. We then segmented our customers and created a tiered support system to ensure larger revenue clients were handled appropriately. From a systems perspective, we merged into a single ticketing system and ensured that all self-service information and ticket creation options for clients were easy to use, covered the full suite of products, and routed to the correct contacts. We developed the proper KPIs and reports needed to discern further improvements to enhance the client experience. Implementation Project delivery and time-to-revenue were evaluated and areas for improvement were found including the need to implement a more firm scheduling process at kick-off that would reduce risk with go-live dates. We added additional client resources such as ongoing pre-training and pre-implementation content, making the process more effective and customer-friendly, especially around the configuration and testing process. We partnered with the development team to identify administration and configuration improvements that could further improve efficiencies. Customer Success At the time of acquisition, neither company had a customer success function in place. We hired a leader to initiate the process, creating an opportunity to gain a better understanding of client temperature as well as generating upsell/cross-sell opportunities. The team was then built and the processes were defined for initial outreach and documenting and reporting on their findings. The CSM team helped develop and execute a "Heal Desk" to identify clients with satisfaction issues where executive and cross-functional engagement was helpful. Back to Case Study