With consistently increasing deal multiples across markets, the opportunity to acquire bolt-on companies in pursuit of multiple-arbitrage has made buy-and-build strategies more popular than ever.

In their 2019 Global Private Equity Report, Bain confirms “Buy-and-build can offer a clear path to value at a time when deal multiples are at record levels and GPs are under heavy pressure to find strategies that don’t rely on traditional tailwinds like falling interest rates and stable GDP growth.”

Business intelligence is one of the hottest topics among industry leaders. Private equity firms are no exception. However, through our exposure to hundreds of companies, precious few have shown up having successfully rationalized their data assets into a functioning toolset capable of accelerating growth. 

Even the smallest companies produce a significant amount of data that represents untapped value. So why don’t more companies exploit the resource?

If you believe better data is one of the top drivers of growth, you are not alone.

According to a 2019 survey, "Fortune 1000 companies are now recognizing that they must become more adept at leveraging their data assets if they are to compete successfully against highly agile data-driven competitors." - MIT Sloan Management Review

In the quest for differentiation among buy-and-build PE firms, everyone seems to be pointing to data as the next business alchemy.

The terms Big Data, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence are bandied about at workshops and industry events as though they’re well-understood and commonly applied. 

They’re not.

"Transparency is not just a buzzword; it may be a necessity for business survival in the 21st century." - Glassdoor

Successful execution is what matters most, even if the model has been around for decades. Airbnb wasn’t the first clearinghouse for C2C home rentals, but its execution was unprecedented.  Excite, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves came first, but none delivered as successfully as Google.