How a Take-Private is Empowering Bottomline to Further Revolutionize B2B Payments
Mar 14, 2024
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Thoma Bravo Partner Brian Jaffee discusses the challenging take-private of Bottomline with CEO Craig Saks. Topics include optimizing cash flow, fintech trends, and transitioning to a private company. They highlight the shift from paper checks to digital payments and the impact on GDP.
Thoma Bravo saw Bottomline's strength in AP automation for enterprises and identified growth potential in B2B payments digitization.
CEO Craig Sachs emphasized the role of company culture in driving innovation, rapid ideation, and new market offerings.
Deep dives
History and Evolution of Bottomline
Bottomline, founded in 1989 and originally public before being taken private, focused on digitizing B2B payments with a core emphasis on AP automation for enterprises. Recognizing the market's shift from paper to digital payments, Toma Bravo identified Bottomline's strong position in AP automation, catering to complex enterprise needs and spotting growth opportunities in automating and digitizing B2B payments.
Acquisition Strategy and Technical Integration
Post-acquisition, Bottomline swiftly acquired Nexus to enhance its strategic position, leveraging balance sheet capacity to facilitate quick, value-adding acquisitions. CEO Craig Sachs spearheaded efforts to integrate Bottomline's diverse B2B payment products, optimizing technical integration, simplifying operations, and unlocking revenue opportunities while maintaining a focus on enhancing the overall strategic coherence of the business.
Culture and Transformation
Upon Bottomline's transformation under new leadership, Craig Sachs highlighted the importance of a strong company culture in driving innovation and success. Leveraging an open-minded, creative culture, Bottomline fostered innovation, alignment, and camaraderie, resulting in rapid ideation-to-execution cycles, leading to the creation of new market offerings and reinforcing the company's growth trajectory.
Value of Objective Diligence and Transformation
The deal to take Bottomline private underscored the value of objective diligence and transformative leadership. Toma Bravo's diligence process, aided by CEO Craig Sachs's involvement, provided clarity on the business's central opportunities and potential for rapid transformation, exemplifying the power of objective assessments in catalyzing strategic shifts and unlocking growth potential in established firms.
Thoma Bravo Partner Brian Jaffee takes listeners inside the years of waiting and watching that eventually turned into a quick make-or-break opportunity to acquire Bottomline. With thirty years of history, a management shakeup, activist investors and plenty of competition, the Bottomline take-private wasn’t easy but it was worth the work. Brian is joined by Bottomline CEO Craig Saks who talks about his unique experience transitioning to CEO, the importance of optimizing cash flow, where the fintech world is headed, and how eliminating paper checks can lead to higher GDP.