Revenue turnaround for software companies

The moment this is built for

Year two or three. The value creation plan said 15% growth. The board pack says 7%. There's a new CEO, or a CRO on the way out, and the deck from the last review had plenty of actions and no owners.

Nothing is broken. That's the problem. There's no covenant breach to force a decision, so the drift continues until the exit case stops holding. Two thirds of PE firms change the CEO during a hold, and 83% of them say an unplanned change lengthens it. Most of those changes happen around year two, when a plan that was behind in March has become the forecast for the exit.

You'll recognise some of these:

• Sellers carrying quotas they won't hit, and a comp plan nobody can explain.
• Pipeline coverage at 3x that doesn't convert, because half of it is older than a sales cycle.
• A forecast that moves every week and teaches you nothing.
• Renewals handled as a service task, with the uplift waived to avoid a hard conversation.
• Customers using 260 seats on a contract that says 200.
• Reviews that end in a deck. No owners, no dates, no baseline.

Why the plan slipped

Private equity's deal maths has changed. Bain puts the EBITDA growth a buyout now needs at 10% to 12% a year, where 5% used to do. The multiple won't carry the deal any more; the operating plan has to. In most software businesses that plan was built on last year's engine: the same conversion rates, the same retention, the same price realisation, with a bigger number on top.

So the gap isn't a strategy gap. It sits in four places that nobody owns together: the capacity of the sales team to carry the number, the pipeline that feeds it, the base that's quietly churning or quietly under-billed, and a forecast that nobody trusts enough to act on. Fix those and the plan is achievable. Leave them and no amount of methodology training moves the number.

What happens in twelve weeks

Week 1. Test the plan. The number is checked against real capacity, conversion, retention and contract terms. Not the CRM's version. The one the data supports.

Weeks 2 to 5. Size the gap. Where the shortfall sits, in pounds, by cause. Agreed with the CEO and CRO, with the three or four things that matter ranked ahead of the twenty that don't.

Weeks 6 to 12. Put it right. Interventions go live with a named owner, a baseline taken in week one and a review date. The weekly deal desk starts. The forecast gets a method. The recovery conversations begin, run by your team.

Every quarter after. The board gets a one-page account: revenue generated, revenue protected, effect on profit, and what didn't work. Including what didn't work. A review that only reports wins isn't a review.

The four places the money hides

Capacity. Whether the team you have can carry the number you've set, and what happens to attainment when the comp plan pays for the behaviour the plan actually needs.

Pipeline and forecast. Stage definitions with exit criteria, a qualification standard applied in deal reviews rather than in a CRM field, and a commit number the CFO can take to the board without a caveat.

Retention and the long tail. Where net revenue retention is below 100%, new business is replacing churn before it grows anything. The renewal process should start at month three, not month eleven. Smaller accounts need a route to renewal that doesn't depend on an account manager's calendar.

Revenue already owed. Usage ahead of entitlement. Escalators written into the contract and never applied. Customers on 2019 terms because moving them felt like a fight. This is the fastest margin available in most software businesses: the cost has already been incurred, so recovered revenue is almost all profit. Independent studies put the leak at 1% to 5% of revenue, and in businesses with bespoke contracts it runs higher.

What this is not

Not a strategy review that ends when the deck is delivered. Not an interim covering a seat for six months. Not a restructuring. Not a methodology rollout.

And not done for you. Veridian Revenue Partners sets up the engine, runs the cadence alongside your team for twelve weeks and hands it over working. The recovery conversations with customers are had by your people, with the evidence in front of them. That's deliberate. A customer relationship repaired by an outsider is repaired for twelve weeks. One repaired by your account manager lasts.

Three ways to engage

Fixed fee, twelve weeks. The programme above, priced before it starts.

Monthly retainer. Once the engine is running, Veridian Revenue Partners keeps the weekly and monthly cadences honest for a fixed fee, on a twelve-month term.

Share of recovered revenue. For the revenue-already-owed work, no win, no fee. The baseline and the measurement are agreed in writing before anything starts.