Case Study
How CapMan Buyout created the most effective evaluation process
CapMan Buyout are experts in mid-market buyouts, as they invest in unlisted companies across the Nordic countries. Their goal is to find interesting growth stories, niche market leaders, winning company cultures and passionate entrepreneurs.
The team at CapMan Buyout have created Nordic success stories for over 30 years, and to continue their success journey, they need the best tools for optimising their board work.
In the summer of 2021, they decided that their way of evaluating their own board, as well as the boards of their portfolio companies, wasn’t always effective. For a decade, they adopted different models, and tried external consultants to evaluate and enhance board performance. However, during the five previous years, they produced their own surveys with their own questions and interview components. They also did all of the data management themselves.
“It required a lot of time and resources to manage. We have not been able to keep up with the progression around board evaluations. ESG questions and other topics have for example become more important today, but we have not been able to keep up and update our surveys in an effective manner. We also had an interface which wasn’t as simple and time effective as we would have liked it to be.”
– Partner at CapMan Buyout
CapMan Buyout wanted to create a more effective process for board evaluations, and that’s why they started the search for an alternative way of working.
Solving the evaluation puzzle
Through their network, CapMan Buyout was introduced to BoardClic, an analytics platform for easy and effective board evaluations. When using the platform, they were able to access best practice question formats, customised to fit different roles within the Board and C-suite level. It seemed that BoardClic was an instant match for CapMan Buyout and their requirements.
“There were a lot of components that we liked about BoardClic. One thing was their expertise. The BoardClic team are dedicated to board evaluations and experts in this field. We also liked the simplicity. We saw a potential to upgrade the efficiency in the process from sending the survey, managing the data, and visualising the results in a professional way.”
– Partner at CapMan Buyout
Results of using BoardClic
CapMan Buyout have enjoyed using BoardClic’s platform, and they want to keep evolving by using the platform. They have already observed several positive changes in their evaluation process.
“We’ve seen an increased response rate, which is great. We’ve also liked the role-specific surveys, which has allowed us to include service management in a way we haven’t been able to before, and we are now able to ask more direct questions.”
CapMan Buyout have also enjoyed the minimal administration. Their old process used to take away valuable time from the team.
Upon completing all evaluations, CapMan Buyout were provided with an analytics report that allowed them to benchmark their individual portfolio companies against the CapMan average, but also against the external benchmark. This provided the Buyout team with a good overview of how the boards were performing in different areas and where improvements could be made. Before BoardClic, this type of data collection would require a lot of manual work, but by using a fully data driven evaluation process, CapMan was able to save time and effort from administration and use it for business development instead.
“BoardClic is smooth, easy to implement and use. It takes no effort from the management. Usually, a new system creates new routines and processes which locks up time from the board but using BoardClic has proven to be easy and time effective.”
Advice for others
Upon being asked about the advice CapMan Buyout would have for others interested in effective board evaluations, they pointed out that BoardClic would not automatically solve all challengesand that companies would need to think about the bigger picture first and then use the platform as a tool to get there.
“You need to have a clear goal with how you want the board evaluations to work in your organisation. When you’ve zoomed out and have a clear plan, you can start looking at tools like BoardClic to see if it fits your vision. For us, it fits perfectly into our process, and I’m sure it fits many others too.”