Meet Samad Rajan, the talented Director of Strategy for the Vertus Group portfolio. As a seasoned member of the team, Samad has invaluable insights into growing vertical market software businesses and the exciting opportunities that come with being part of the Vertus Group ecosystem. He is a key resource for our businesses, assisting them with tackling complex problems, generating solutions, and implementing strategic initiatives.
We recently sat down with Samad to take a deeper dive into his experiences with Vertus Group.
Walk us through your background before joining Vertus Group.
My professional education was as a CPA and my career began afterwards in audit. After a couple of years in audit I moved to manufacturing, doing financial reporting, budgeting, and forecasting for a manufacturing company.
My background has primarily been in finance, but with Vertus Group I've essentially been able to use and evolve that skill set to add value to the multiple businesses in our portfolio.
Describe your career progression since joining Vertus Group.
I came in as a Senior Financial Analyst 8 years ago and was working on the finances for a couple of the businesses we had acquired back then. As our portfolio began to decentralize from Jonas Software (Vertus Group's parent organization), I grew to lead the finance team and we were able to take better care of the businesses we acquired. In the last few years, I've had the chance to transition over into strategy and use a slightly different skill set to help our businesses.
What does your day-to-day look like?
My day-to-day doesn't look like anything else. There is no particular order that it follows, each day is very different from one another. One day I could be working with financial models the other I could be talking to one of the Presidents within our businesses and helping them work through a specific issue. Because of my tenure at Vertus Group, I can give them a helpful perspective of what has worked well in our portfolio.
What is rewarding about your role?
I've had the opportunity to address different types of problems. In finance, I was working through a very specific problem set all the time, which was great, but this new role has allowed me to develop my skill set and tackle all sorts of challenges beyond finance. Almost any challenge a business can face, I feel like I can give meaningful insight into overcoming it.
What is challenging about your role?
The ambiguity. Each day brings on a new challenge for our businesses and I'm right there listening to them and offering alternatives while also trying to understand their business better. Each company that joins Vertus Group brings a wealth of knowledge with them, so my goal is to trying to be on the same wavelength as these businesses in order to help them. This can be challenging, but it can also be very exciting.
What accomplishment at Vertus Group are you most proud of?
Growing the finance team. When I first joined the finance team were just a few people and now we've grown it to a team of over 30. Not only has it been amazing to see our businesses and our portfolio grow over the years, but it has also been great to see how the people have grown and developed their careers here and built relationships.
Describe the culture at Vertus. How does Vertus Group's culture influence the businesses that it owns?
I'd say the primary aspect is autonomy. It doesn't matter if you're a business unit leader or not, there is a real sense of empowerment and trust here for team members to take ownership of ideas and projects.
In terms of the businesses we own, I've seen many acquisitions now and seen the business leaders of acquired companies come in and enjoy the degree of autonomy that is provided to them. They appreciate that they are empowered to continue to make decisions on the day-to-day operations of the company and serve the business as they were before.
What interests you about the Vertical Market Software industry?
Companies in vertical market software operate in very niche markets and the ability that this software has to solve the specific niche needs of the customer is fascinating to me. In horizontal spaces, you often don't see the businesses get close to the end users because they could be operating in any number of markets. With vertical market software, you get a real understanding of the end user, it creates a healthy business with great customer relationships.
What excites you about Vertus Group's future?
What excites me most about Vertus Group is the sky is the limit. We have a proven track record of acquiring businesses and giving them a platform to continue to grow their value to customers and employees. If we continue to perform at this high level each day we come into work, we become the premier provider of vertical market software and make it attractive for other businesses to join us.
We want to continue the journey our portfolio has been on, only better.
