Research

Our business services practice has two parts: data/IT companies and payment processing/bank technology. For the data/IT market, the first major use case is helping marketers target advertising more effectively. We think the companies that will win in this market are those that have superior data assets (given we think channel expertise over time is less of a competitive advantage) and strong advertiser relationships/customers (as advertisers are ultimately the funders of the entire ad ecosystem). The second major use case is helping banks and corporates make better underwriting decisions. We think the winning companies here will be those with superior data assets, with an international opportunity, and with the proven ability to innovate and cross sell. For payment processing/bank technology, we see two primary markets: selling services to banks and selling services to merchants. For the bank focused companies, we think the winning companies will have established the role of trusted IT advisor to the bank, will leverage that status to cross sell additional products/take share of wallet from point solutions to help offset price compression, and will have developed or bought higher-growth/higher-margin payment assets to drive incremental margin. For the merchant focused market, we think the winning companies will have a method to differentiate their services from standard merchant acquiring offerings. In some cases it could be achieving a trusted advisor status with the merchant and in others it could be offering a acquiring integrated into a value added software/services bundle.