Basware

29 Oct

Background

2013: Oakstone partners with Coupa to be their exclusive external partner in building their GTM teams globally.
During this time, Oakstone worked closely with their VP of Northern Europe, Mark McCarthy, to build his team across the UK and the Nordics. Oakstone assisted Mark and Coupa in hiring several top-performing salespeople, 2 of which we’re top performers globally for 4 consecutive years, which contributed to Marks teams success and helped them land and expand in UK, Sweden and Denmark.

This team subsequently became, at the time, the top-performing region globally.
Mark then inherited the East US team, whereby Oakstone supported him and his peers in hiring GTM people globally.
Oakstone continued to assist Coupa in making over 110 hires globally.
2022: Mark leaves Coupa and joins private equity firm Accel-KKR as a GTM Advisor and Principal to assist investments to scale and grow. Oakstone assists multiple companies in Accel-KKR's portfolio make executive hires.
2022: AKKR Private Equity heavily invests in Basware, and Oakstone becomes an exclusive, retained partner based on the level of procurement and global GTM hiring experience.

Basware was founded in 2002 by Vesa Tykkyläinen in Finland.
Basware achieved stable, profitable growth over 20 years, selling an extensive portfolio of solutions related to procurement. However, it was historically known for selling those solutions in a feature-and-benefit approach to mid-market.
AKKR acquired Basware due to their best-in-class enterprise solution for e-invoicing and AP automation.

Basware required strategic AE’s who could sell large multi-million, complex deals in a business-led consultative way to large enterprise businesses – which hadn’t previously been hired by Basware.
Basware required specialist support to identify these profiles, qualify their suitability and attract them top Basware, made particularly challenging given the previous reputation of not doing multi-million dollar deals prior to AKKR’s involvement and amended GTM strategy
Basware was an established e-procurement company; however, it needed assistance repositioning its brand to reflect its renaissance in selling business led deals to large enterprise, whilst focusing on their best in breed AP automation and e-Invoicing software.

Oakstone worked with Mark McCarthy, Basware's Chief Revenue Officer, and Basware's Chief People Officer, to establish their requirements and growth plans.
Oakstone conducted coinciding international searches globally to identify target profiles.
Oakstone then approached these candidates, establishing their motivations and career goals to qualify whether Basware was the right fit.
Conversations with qualified candidates required educating them about the renaissance that was going on in Basware to pique their interest.

Oakstone conducted multiple searches and introduced highly qualified candidates across all roles in the UK, Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the USA – resulting in multiple hires within EMEA, US and APAC with an unprecedented calibre level, despite trading for 22 years.
Oakstone is continuing to support Basware's international growth plans.