Business Alignment at Venafi

Venafi is a software company that provides “Systems Management for Encryption.” Like many other software companies, Venafi needs to focus on aligning the “go to market” plan, company resources, and the product roadmap with the business opportunity. Venafi engaged SageCreek Partners to help provide mentor capital in these areas in 2008. Greg Butterfield was appointed to the board of directors and the rest of the SageCreek Partners team began to work with the executive staff at Venafi.

In Q2 2009 Venafi plans to release an updated version of its primary product. This presents new opportunities at both the technology feature level and in entering new markets. The SageCreek Partners team has actively provided feedback and advice on opportunities for Venafi to consider as it launches its latest release.

An area where SageCreek helps is in the creation of corporate vision. Trell Rohovit, CEO of Venafi, said, “At a technology level SageCreek Partners is helping us expand the vision on how the product can meet our customer needs. We have had detailed discussions on how to leverage our new product offering with an SDK. We have also had great feedback on how these new features enable new growth in revenue in new market segments.”

Greg Butterfield and the rest of the SageCreek Partners team have participated in detail in the creation of the 2009 company plan. This has included dialog with the sales team and analysis of the plusses and minuses of working with various “go to market” partners. “It is very helpful to have another set of eyes reviewing how we plan to achieve our financial goals,” said Trell. “Not only is Greg a board member that asks questions in that context, but as a CEO that has been down this path before Greg provides a lot of feedback and coaching outside of the context of a board meeting. Greg knows what it takes to set a financial goal and then put the pieces in place to meet that goal.”

Venafi is looking to increase its 2009 revenue that comes from outside of North America. Through work with SageCreek’s European Vice President, Volker Wiora, Venafi has been able to start to build a German presence at very low cost. Marketing materials have been translated, introductions have been made to potential new accounts, and a mechanism to provide support for customers in that region of the world has been setup. This level of geographic expansion would not be possible on the internal only budget.

Trell summarized the value that he gets in working with SageCreek Partners in the following way: “The detailed reviews and dialog that we have with SageCreek Partners have been valuable to not only me but also to the rest of the executive team at Venafi. They come in and engage with the whole management team and then provide constructive feedback on points that we should consider. This level of direct interactive feedback helps me as CEO to better lead my team. “