Sector Thesis Case Study: Cloud IT Services

The Challenge

Our client’s Business Services team reached out to Apex Leaders for help with their thesis around cloud-based IT services. Their interest in this industry was due to secular tailwinds of demand for companies to transition to and/or more effectively utilize the cloud, which they believed would drive growth within the consulting, systems implementation, and managed services sectors.

Scope

Our process started with a comprehensive and consultative intake call. During the meeting, we uncovered our client’s seven premises for pursuing an investment theme in this area:

• IT & Cloud Services have attractive industry dynamics with secular tailwinds
• Managed Services / IT Consulting / Systems Integration is the right path to invest in the sector
• Deep universe of investable targets
• IT services is a strong fit with their Business Service team’s background
• Numerous value creation plays to run to drive equity returns
• Strong set of executives to lead and support efforts
• Well-defined execution plan to ensure success in the area

Discover

The client was very committed to making the right investment in this space. They wanted Apex to help them build out a small, strategic team of executives with “deep domain expertise” from IT services companies with experience working for and running these types of operations. Ultimately, the goal was for these executives to work with the firm to refine their thesis and present a strategy in front of the committee for investment approval, work through diligence processes as they occur, and identify advisors that could sit on a board of the acquired platform post-close. With this criteria as the guide, our team got to work on conducting project-specific research, custom recruiting, and personally vetting potential advisors.