Software: product strategy is the key to accelerating growth

Bowmark’s investment focus is on B2B software providers that cater to specific vertical markets or customer segments – in other words, companies that are differentiated not just by their technology, but by profound sector knowledge, regulatory expertise and deep client relationships. This specialisation underpins the development of mission-critical software applications that sit at the heart of their clients’ operations – enabling their customers to improve productivity, reduce costs, and increase revenues with advanced analytics.

Initially, many of the specialist software companies we have backed addressed limited use cases. However, by investing ahead of the curve, they have developed new product adjacencies – and evolved to provide holistic solutions on a unified platform, accelerating their growth and expanding their addressable market.

Automating the global structured products lifecycle

Case study: WSD

WSD is a leading document and workflow automation software provider and data vendor to the global structured products industry. With offices in London and New York, the company serves a range of capital markets clients, including leading global investment banks.

WSD has developed its product roadmap based on a deep understanding of the structured products industry, the evolving regulatory environment, the opportunities for technological innovation and an in-depth knowledge of its clients' needs. As a result, the business invested early to build on its foundation in document automation. It now provides a comprehensive software offering, which encompasses workflow, connectivity and data solutions, enabling straight-through processing and providing a holistic solution for the entire structured products lifecycle.

Recently, the company partnered with Nvidia to launch an AI-based virtual financial analyst – Melody – and an AI-based document automation solution – Autocoder. The business has also integrated AI into its operations to improve efficiency by displacing manual processes. Melody allows users to obtain real-time information on structured products more easily, assisting with processes that previously required familiarity with intricate user interfaces. Autocoder significantly speeds up document templating for some of the industry’s most complex regulatory documents. Since our investment in 2022, WSD has more than doubled its revenues and has significant scope for further growth thanks to this innovative product development strategy.

Building an end-to-end field service management platform

Case study: Totalmobile

Totalmobile is a market leader in field service management software solutions. The company has approximately 1,000 customers, and is relied on by around 500,000 front-line workers across the government, healthcare, facilities management and infrastructure sectors.

Since our investment, we have supported an expansion of the product offering, both organically and through four strategic acquisitions, adding capabilities and enhancing the company’s vertical specialism. This has extended Totalmobile's product suite from its core mobile working solution to encompass the entire field service value chain.

Totalmobile's end-to-end platform now spans personnel rostering and scheduling; mobile workflow and job management; enterprise asset management; and Al-enabled real-time analytics. This connected offering delivers significant return on investment for customers, enabling them to streamline processes, enhance service quality and drive operational efficiency, aided by Al.

For example, using Totalmobile’s technology, a property maintenance engineer can now simply photograph an issue in need of repair – from which AI can identify the solution, generate a schedule of works and allocate the correct personnel to address it.

As a result of this product development strategy, Totalmobile has more than doubled its revenues since our investment and expanded its addressable market.

Capturing new market opportunities

Case study: Lendscape

Lendscape is a leading technology provider to the global secured commercial finance market. The company’s invoice finance software underpins the secured lending offerings of more than 120 banks and financial institutions worldwide, supporting the management of $200 billion of lending annually.

Over the past few years, the business has accelerated the development of a new product which caters for the asset finance market – supported by a dedicated team of 40 to facilitate its launch – extending its reach across the broader secured lending market.

It has also recently launched a new data product, Lendscape CONNECT, which provides lenders with secure and direct access to live data from their clients’ accounting systems. This eliminates time-consuming reconciliations, removes the client burden of manually uploading invoices and significantly enhances efficiency.

Continual investment in new product development is crucial

Software companies that take a holistic approach to product development, investing ahead of the curve at the expense of short-term profit, will be the winners in a rapidly evolving industry. By delivering tangible returns on investment for their customers through multiple use cases, these firms not only strengthen their relationships with – and increase revenues from – existing clients, they also expand their addressable market. This forward-thinking mindset is the key to success in a market characterised by increasingly advanced SaaS and Al-enabled solutions.