CASE STUDY
Ecrion Software Turns Around and Sells to PE-Backed Firm
Background
- Ecrion was a small document generation and automation company founded in 2004 by Florin Vasilian, a software engineer by trade. Florin ran Ecrion on a cash-flow positive basis through its first fourteen years.
- Ecrion’s customers were primarily large enterprises and governments across the globe that generated high volumes of customer letters, complex statements, and other communications.
- In 2018, Florin decided to add a Customer Success function to his team, hiring Craig Watkins to build and operate it. Having worked together in the past, Craig hired Tim Koopmann to create and run the Account Management function within Customer Success.
- Ecrion also hired Zach Gossin as Ecrion’s first Enterprise Sales Director, responsible for new enterprise account acquisition.
Situation
- During 2017 and 2018, Ecrion rebuilt their product from an on-site perpetual license package to a full-fledged SaaS solution with significantly broader customer experience features.
- The existing Sales and Marketing leadership struggled to effectively lead the revenue team through the transition, making 2018 the only negative year in the company’s history. The sales pipeline was also significantly down.
- At the end of 2018, Florin made changes to his leadership team, promoting Craig to Chief Revenue Officer, hoping to return the company to positive growth.
Reorganizing the Revenue Team
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Craig immediately named Zach VP Sales and Tim VP Customer Success. These three have since founded Reditus.
- The Reditus team was faced with an anemic pipeline, a new product based on limited market research, a bootstrap budget, knowledge that the transition from perpetual license to SaaS always leads to a reduction in revenue, low morale amongst the broader team due to poor performance, and the need to grow quickly.
- After a three-day strategy session, the team agreed on the following division of responsibilities:
- Zach: Lead Generation and New Account Acquisition
- Tim: Channel Sales and Customer Success
- Craig: Marketing, Sales Engineering, and overall team coordination
- Tim recruited Zach’s Account Executive to become an Account Manager, and Zach backfilled with a new Account Executive. Craig hired a Sales Engineer, assumed responsibility for three marketing resources in Ecrion’s Romania office, and restructured the US-based marketing team—outsourcing many of their functions.
THE TEAM:
Craig Watkins
– Ecrion CRO, Reditus Managing Director
Tim Koopmann
– Ecrion VP of Customer Success, Reditus Managing Director
Zach Gossin
– Ecrion VP of Sales, Reditus Managing Director
The Plan
- Faced with the reality that revenues must increase, and that they had no pipeline or messaging for the new product, the team decided on a two-pronged approach:
- Tim was to focus on upselling the existing customer base, moving them from the legacy perpetual license software to the expanded capabilities of the new SaaS solution.
- Craig was to take the lead building out the go-to-market plan for the new service, and for growing the pipeline. Zach would test messaging with prospects and leads, find and manage a lead generation contractor, and close what opportunities he could.
Results
“The Ecrion Revenue Team: Craig, Zach and Tim, understood my needs as a founder and CEO of a small, boot-strapped tech company.
They worked well with me, and did whatever it took to ensure Ecrion’s success.
I appreciate the team and am grateful for their efforts.”
Florin Vasilian
Ecrion Software Founder and CEO
- In 2019, Revenues grew by over 13% – despite the transition to a SaaS model. This was driven by a 232% increase in upsells to existing customers.
- Pipeline grew by 92%, and was of a significantly higher quality, improving sales team effectiveness.
- New sales in late 2019-2020 were up over 400%, and included the largest 6 deals in company history
- In 2020, despite the beginning of the Covid Pandemic and bootstrap budgets, revenues grew again by 25%.
- Based on this success, Ecrion was acquired in late 2020 by PE-backed MHC Software.
- Florin remained at MHC for a year per his contract, and then shifted focus to a new start-up venture.
About Reditus
Reditus is the reformation of the three members of the highly successful Ecrion Revenue Leadership Team. Reditus provides revenue growth services to B2B tech start-ups in founder-friendly engagement and cost models. We were born to solve this challenge: Start-ups have the greatest need for experienced revenue growth resources, but often struggle to afford them.
Reditus’ specializations include marketing, business development, sales engineering, direct sales, channel sales, customer success and account management. We offer flexible engagements including fractional or full-time contractor services, advisory services, project-based consulting and team-building services.