One of the biggest challenges at scale is technology performance.

This week a colleague was complaining about the productivity hit their portcos were getting from slow response times on IT systems.

Later in the week, I experienced this for myself after making a mistake on my Tax Return.

A simple mistake. The wrong surname.

After 95 minutes on hold to HMRC, a polite Scottish gentleman answered the phone, looked up my tax record. He informed me that while he could correct my error, his system was running so slow, wasn’t able to actually do it. His advice… call back at a less busy time.

In this scenario, there is no choice but to call back, it’s the British government after all.

Imagine your portco was paying £100K p.a for a SaaS service, providing this level of service. Or imagine you portcos was providing the £100k p.a SaaS service.

This story should resonate from working with portco tech leaders on technology value creation.

PE firms are missing out on the value derived from intangible experiences.

This is a bigger challenge for PE firms due to rapid growth and scale. Often, portcos have grown quickly through multiple mergers and acquisitions.

You will typically end up with multiple systems and subsystems that don’t even know the other exists.

One of the biggest challenges at scale is technology performance.

How often does a client call your portco with a problem, only the operator to sit on the line for 10 minutes while your system processes their response.

Being able to have multiple disparate users accessing client records on the same system at the same time is essential.

This data is updated and reported multiple times per day. This data is used to positively drive customer experience.

This data is instant to access.

Without a performant system, you will negatively impact your customer’s experience.

Good PE firms are running strategic technology performance programmes

Great PE firms are not just focusing on performance, but creating a unified e2e journey. Connecting customer acquisition, customer service and operations.

How would you benchmark your firm’s technology performance capabilities?

Protectively monitoring technology performance to help you make decisions in your PortCos.
Assessing your performance capabilities relative to competitors.
Using NPS and churn to influence how your PortCos interact with their customers.

Let’s assume that Technology performance is on your PE firm’s agenda. What do you see as the biggest area for improvement?