RTO Insider’s founders and management team worked with Collingwood to transform RTO Insider into a scalable, high-growth enterprise subscriptions business, securing a premium buyer and excellent valuation

Challenge

Founded in 2013, RTO Insider LLC is a US-based subscription publishing business serving the Energy Sector. The founders knew they needed to scale and had a desire to exit at some point. Despite significant market opportunity, however, growth had slowed and their market seemed more competitive than ever. Although they had built a competent team, the demands of their core products and recent new launches left the founders feeling like they were more operationally involved than before.

Solution

Collingwood provided an advisory team who tailored and implemented our proven value creation methodology to drive transformational results. We embedded a strategic adviser in the business at board level who helped the founders find new vision and focus. This included the development of a value creation strategy that aligned with customer and market need, KPIs that would excite investors, and a set of goals they could truly align their team behind. The formation and facilitation of a formal board and a Senior Leadership Team, enabled the founders to first replicate, then delegate and extricate themselves from the day-to-day of the business, giving them the strategic headspace they needed. 

With growth slowing, a top priority was to help accelerate sales, which we did by implementing customer research and insights projects that clearly showed the size of the opportunity and underpinned a clear plan to unlock it. This important work showed what was achievable early on and enabled a material inflexion point for the business. 

Collingwood worked with the commercial team at RTO Insider to transform the value proposition to an enterprise-wide subscription offering, achieved through product, pricing, packaging, marketing, and upskilling and scaling of the sales and account management team. We enabled this through implementation of new sales and client success playbooks.

Results

The result? Consistent double digit year-on-year revenue growth, a significant increase in annual contract value, and a team that was totally aligned behind a value creation strategy. This enabled the founder and management team to work closely with Collingwood’s M&A team, meeting potential investors well in advance of the sale and creating a competitive process that delivered the kind of valuation that excited co-founder Rich Heidhorn Jr.

ROI

  • A three-fold increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in this period.
  • Significant double-digit revenue growth based on strong renewals.
  • Achieved above market valuation on the sale of the business.