Frequently Asked Questions

What strategic challenges Teragonia can assist with?

If you find yourself asking these strategic questions, Teragonia has the answer.

Poor Visibility into Key Business Drivers
  • Conflicting information: I get different answers for the same question depending on who runs the report – is there a better way?
  • Opaque insights: I invested significant capital into a cloud data warehouse – why do I struggle to get basic insights?
  • Missed reporting deadlines: Management has missed critical timelines for lenders or board reports – how do I prevent this?
Expensive Transformations
  • Speed and cost: An expensive system overhaul carries a lot of risk – how can I mitigate this?
  • Data-driven value creation strategy: We have a great business – how do we use data to measure progress and accelerate growth?
  • Pre- and post-close transition: Diligence provided insights for post-close value creation – how do I capture this value?
Talent Gap
  • Data and AI strategy: The company has a lot of data which I know is valuable – can someone help me unlock the value and how do I unlock value with quick wins?
  • Program management: I need to stand up an analytics platform simultaneously with other tech initiatives – how do I mitigate risks?
  • Exit preparation: I want to defend significant pro-forma adjustments during the exit – does the data support the deal narrative?

Where does Teragonia fit in value creation?

We are often engaged early in the value creation process. The earlier we are engaged, the more opportunity there is to drive EBITDA gains.

Sign-to-Close and the First 100 Days
  • Knowledge Bridge from investors to operators: We are the knowledge transfer bridge from deal teams to operations partners and management teams. We do this by consuming insights from a diligence data pack or report and translating it into actionable value creation activities.  
  • Cross-Functional Management Support: With our experience we know the roadblocks and priorities of the first 100 days and provide data-driven support for management so that they can focus on core business operations. Our solutions are built with cross-functional business processes in-mind to enable highest productivity and connectivity. 
  • Access and Integrate Source Systems: We are skilled at gaining access to legacy systems that may have previously been unobtainable.  
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The 360° Customer Journey

Customer growth is key to maximizing value creation plans, but data to make strategic decisions is often limited since tracking customers throughout systems, divisions, and departments over time can be a challenge. 

Our bespoke analytics solution creates a unified view of the customer journey, providing an enterprise-wide view of the cost to serve and customer-level profitability. We give management the insights needed to drive growth. 

What are data challenges that Teragonia assists with?

We organize data challenges into three categories.

Data Cannot Be Accessed: “I do not have visibility” or “I am not sure how to get or use the data”
  • I just bought a company and have limited visibility into operational performance. How fast can you show me XYZ metric(s)? 
  • I have a buy and build platform and need to rapidly integrate tuck-in, leaving a reporting ‘blackhole’ for many months. 
  • We have visibility into Financials and Invoices, but we cannot track labor utilization or other operational metrics consistently across subsidiaries. 
Data is not Leveraged Effectively: “I have data but I do not know what to do with it or I do not have the tools to analyze it”
  • How can I use data to identify new growth opportunities or areas for cost optimization in the next 100 days? 
  • Are there ways to make our reporting more frequent, or forward-looking versus solely historical in nature? 
  • How can I better connect operational data to the financial performance of the business? 
Data to Achieve a Specific Value Creation Initiative that has a heavy data dependency

Organic Growth 

  • How can I optimize top of funnel sales and marketing activity and drive lead generation, customer retention and upsell? 
  • How should I update prices and discounts strategically? 
  • How should I optimize my labor allocation and service mix? 

Exit Readiness 

  • What initiatives can we run now to track a run-rate in the sale process? 
  • How can I facilitate exit preparation with the investment bankers to highlight opportunity from future value creation initiatives?

How does Teragonia work with portfolio companies?

There are two ways our clients engage us. 

Managed Services

Companies with a nascent analytics engineering capacity are most suited for managed services, which includes an initial set-up fee and monthly subscription where we work as an extended team of the company and continue to provide analytics services. It is challenging for middle-market companies to recruit and retain sophisticated analytics and AI engineering professionals on payroll. We provide a cost-effective, fully managed service to support the company for all its analytics and AI needs. Our team possesses advanced degrees from the premier universities in the country and has experience working at Fortune 100 companies and large financial services firms including private equity firms. Our clients get the full benefit of (i) a highly qualified and experienced team, who deeply understand and can drive your business priorities, and (ii) our pre-provisioned analytics technology infrastructure, under a single-window agreement. As the company matures, our solutions can be transitioned to management.

Professional Services

Companies with mature in-house analytics engineering capabilities are typically best served by ‘time and materials’ services where we co-develop the analytics platform with the company and provide industry-specific analytics capability augmentation, included ad hoc solutions. We empower the in-house analytics engineering team by providing training sessions on best-practices.

How does Teragonia mitigate risk of project success and return on investment?

Our value creation playbooks are built to hedge against execution risk.

Phased Implementation

We deploy the analytics engineering and AI solutions in modular stages, allowing for iterative feedback and adjustments, which reduces the impact of potential issues on business operations. We can tailor to smaller, quick win solution needs or provide a comprehensive suite of end-to-end solutions.

Change Management and Adoption Protocols

Our comprehensive change management processes ensure that stakeholders are aligned and bought in to operationalize data-driven strategies. Our change management processes pre-empt disruptions and resistance which often accompany major transformations.

We look forward to establishing a partnership with you and sharing how our solutions can help.

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Thomas Thayyil Thomas

Chartered Accountant | Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland

Master’s in International Accounting and Finance | University of Strathclyde, U.K.

Master’s in Finance | Mahatma Gandhi University, India

A proven business builder, innovator and M&A advisor with significant global experience, and adept in quantitative techniques and technology, Thomas brings forth a unique set of perspectives and capabilities to boost the systemic efficiency of fast-growing enterprises. Thomas has been a trusted advisor throughout his professional services career to several financial sponsors, sovereign wealth funds and Fortune 100 corporations, throughout the M&A life cycle from deal sourcing, deal execution, post-close value creation, to exit.

Prior to founding Teragonia, Thomas worked at Houlihan Lokey for five years where he established two successful and fast-growing practices from the ground up, including a traditional financial due diligence practice as well as a sophisticated data science practice. At Houlihan Lokey, he led the design and development of a fit-for-purpose, cutting-edge, and highly secure data science technology platform capable of hosting thousands of users and supporting several hundred clients. Leveraging the platform, he innovated several scalable and quickly deployable analytics applications creating significant value for the financial sponsor clients. Examples include various analytics and data science applications for deal sourcing, greenfield growth strategy, price optimization, salesforce effectiveness, customer retention, workforce rationalization, and location performance optimization.

Prior to Houlihan Lokey, Thomas spent more than a decade at Ernst & Young working in the Assurance, M&A Diligence and Strategy Consulting practices across the Atlantic.