Telecommunications
Surviving a downturn
How T. Curtis Holmes Jr. led MetaSolv Software through the technology bust
By Kristy J. O’Hara
Smart Business Dallas | November 2006
After the tech bust in 2001, many of MetaSolv Software Inc.’s customers went bankrupt, and in the “nuclear winter” that followed, T. Curtis Holmes Jr. was promoted to president and CEO of the company.
To survive the storm, MetaSolv needed a plan to get different products, talent and customers, so Holmes made a few key acquisitions. MetaSolv now works with some of the top companies around the world, and its revenue hit $91.8 million last year.
“We defined that strategy across the organization, we communicated that strategy and then we aligned our resources around making that happen, and we’ve made tremendous progress in each component,” Holmes says.
Smart Business spoke with Holmes about how he led the company through the storm and came out stronger on the other side.
How do you integrate a new company after an acquisition?
When you think about a successful integration, certain things are key. You want to make sure that you are bringing in the combined talent, taking the best of both companies and really giving people in both companies the opportunity to lead, to contribute and to have a say in how the business will proceed. That’s the key aspect around people.
When it comes to product, typically when you’re acquiring, you’re acquiring some product or service. It’s important that those products are complementary to what you already have or you integrate those assets to provide compelling value to customers.
It’s important to make sure the acquisitions are bringing value to customers. When we looked at the integration, we looked at what’s required to maintain the existing customers, what’s required to win new customers, and it’s important to have a plan to ensure that happens.
Acquiring is the easy part. The most difficult part becomes the integration. Most people can acquire, but the challenge is integrating those assets, whether those assets are people, customers or product.
We were successful at integrating those assets — leveraging market-leading products, mining and investing in the customer base, really giving the talent in the combined companies the opportunity to participate in the new company. All of that was absolutely key to acquiring and integrating assets.
How do you manage growth?
It might sound cliche, but we stick with our strategy. We say, in everything we’re doing, ‘How does this align with our strategy?’ When we look at our marketing programs, we ask, ‘How does this align with our strategy?’
When we look at where our target customers are, ‘How does it align with our strategy?’ When we look at where we need to hire, ‘How does it align with our strategy?’
We haven’t had the luxury of growing too fast at this point, but what we have done is put the right people in place and targeted the right markets so we grow at a manageable rate for the business.
What most inhibits growth?
The first item is lack of a well-defined strategy. It’s very difficult to grow when you’re not clear what your strategy is. You have an operational plan and execute on that strategy, so execution is the second component of that.
The third component is a lack of growth mindset. We consistently communicate that we always have to be thinking about what’s required to grow, what’s required to move the company to the next level.
It was always important to maintain a growth mindset, and with that, you have to have a good strategy for mindset. It was important to invest for growth. Then you have to make the hard decisions and stay the course. Those were the things that were critical, and that’s what we recommend to others in running a business.
How do you maintain that course and mindset?
It was about failure not being an option. As long as we all understood that, we just persevered. Nobody wants to fail. The team didn’t want to fail. The company didn’t want to fail. I personally did not want to fail.
When you look at what we had, we had a strong customer base, we had strong products, we had some of the best talent around the world. We just needed to execute, and we needed the market to improve, and then we could capitalize on it.
Once the market improved, we had the right product, the right people, the right customers at the right time. That allowed us to stay the course, but it was not easy. I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was easy at all.
HOW TO REACH: MetaSolv Software Inc., www.metasolv.com
