Transformation of DataCash to secure $500M acquisition by MasterCard

DataCash, a UK pioneer in eCommerce payments and fraud prevention had expanded through multiple acquisitions without integrating them technically or commercially. There was a large Sales team without a clear idea of what services could actually be sold, and whether they could actually be delivered and scaled live to customers. There were instances of mis-selling, where delivery was impossible within the anticipated timescales.

Acquired companies maintained their own Sales and Product Development activity without any navigation/co-ordination from DataCash. The Digital Commerce market was experiencing explosive growth but DataCash were poorly prepared to target expansion in International/ Cross Border Payments; a move towards ‘Real Time’ Payments and Fraud Prevention, and diversification away from their Core market – Gaming, Gambling and On Line Poker. Products and Services weren’t documented.

The 200+ strong Tech Team had no Roadmap, weren’t working with Agile Mentality/ Approaches and were driven by short term, non-qualified and poorly understood ‘customer expectations’ dictated by Sales people. DataCash hadn’t won a new customer deal over the previous 12 months and had no clearly understood/communicated Strategy for growing the business other than acquiring more companies.

There was no Product and Service portfolio, and no Product Management, just Short Term Projects that were customer specific with no overall Direction or C0-ordination. Project Managers were pulled in different directions by Sales Leads.

I was brought in by the main Shareholder and CEO Ashley Head to build a professional product function, develop a Strategy, create a Roadmap and execute versus qualified customer demands.

As Ashley said “I am looking to be bought by Visa, MasterCard, or American Express within the next 18 months.” My task was to fix the key issues with DataCash – Integrate the acquisitions; Set the direction and roadmaps for the products and services in line with market trends; provide a technical roadmap for the technology team and develop agile mentality; win as much Retailer business as possible via a clearly defined, technically feasible, and customer focused product portfolio, and make the business attractive to Visa, MasterCard and Amex.

In addition I had to take over Line Management responsibility for the Co-Founder of DataCash, the Founder and MD of Datacash’s ‘Card Present’ acquisition ACK, all Business Analysts and all Project Managers.

My most urgent action was to structure, qualify and prioritise customer communication on products and services as well as specific requirements/expectations. Sales people had been selling off of inaccurate 5 year old vision statements rather than actually valuable and ready to deliver products and services. Early on I had to resolve issues with a key customer and identify their genuine needs, after they were sold an inappropriate service for their business that also was only just being reviewed for potential development.

My second priority was to stop the 2 Top potential Product Managers resigning and leaving. Both had found new jobs outside of DataCash before I joined. I had to secure significant Pay Rises for both from my CEO and Board, but that proved to be a good investment once we had to sell the business.

I re-organised a consolidated group of project managers into 2 areas:
1. Product Groups, including a Product Manager and Business Analyst in 3 separate product areas
– Card Payments (Visa, MasterCard, Amex)
– ‘Alternate’ and Localised Real Time payment partnerships/Solutions including Wallets such as PayPal
– Fraud Prevention.

I trained each Product Manager up in terms of the basics, such as Customer/Market Requirements/Pain Points; Product Definition/how pain points were addressed; Competitive/Market Positioning; Product Vision/Roadmap and Customer centric prioritisation. I recruited to add extra experience, particularly BA’s so we could flesh customer and market requirements out and start to extend the Roadmaps. I engaged and collaborated with all of the companies that DataCash had acquired but not integrated. This ‘onboarded’ all of the DataCash acquisitions into an Holistic perspective, and prioritised/planned their initiatives out without compromising their autonomy/influence.

2. ‘Professional Services’/Technical Sales and Implementation

I inherited 3 Project Managers with a Technical background, who also had excellent customer facing skills. This allowed me to build a bridge directly into customer organisations to flesh out the right solutions for each customer, as well as forming a fast way to prototype and trial new products and services. It also formed a credible bridge into our Technology teams to fast track feasibility and finesse products through direct lead customer interaction.

I had confidence that our key initiatives, whilst based on the needs of a lead customer each time, would be attractive to other customers and aimed for 80% standardisation with 20% customisation. This became immediately scalable and I planned out the priority order of customers for each planned Innovation.

Within weeks as a team we had defined, roadmapped and updated communications/collateral to train the Sales teams with and enable re-organisation of processes plus ways of working, including introduction of ‘True’ (customer interactive) Agile across all teams and creating a positive impact with customers.

This fertile period enabled creation and delivery of more than 10 new Products, each with lead customers – and our lead customers were opening up new markets (including International expansion beyond the UK) for DataCash. Lead customers included ASOS, Boots, Regus, Sony, Paddy Power, BetFair and Tesco.

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

• What did you do to help… Improve access to skills, capabilities and expert availability
• What did you do to help… Improve clarity of responsibilities and capabilities to deliver against them
• What did you do to help… Identify, agree and prioritise new ideas and opportunities to generate business value
• What did you do to help… Ability to demonstrate, socialise and communicate concepts, outcomes and business cases
• What did you do to help… Validation and endorsement of decisions and approach
• What did you do to help… Enhanced cross-business collaboration, communication and buy in
• What did you do to help… Improved internal satisfaction, loyalty and customer value
• What did you do to help… Agree and define actions and a feasible roadmap
• What did you do to help… Improved clarity, accuracy & confidence in documentation or in decision making

• What did you do to help… Reduce time in delivering change from skills gaps or capacity issues
• What did you do to help… Reduce ambiguity around vision, goals, strategy and roadmaps
• What did you do to help… Understand weaknesses and capability gaps to better plan for structured, feasible improvement
• What did you do to help… Reduce uncertainty around performance and time to delivering effectively
• What did you do to help… Reduce time in proving concepts, hypothesis and business case creation
• What did you do to help… Reduce blockers to progress due to personal and structural agendas
• What did you do to help… Reduce or remove resistance to change & innovation
• What did you do to help… Reduce political bias and credibility challenges across silos
• What did you do to help… Reduce ambiguity around ownership and responsibilities

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

• What did you do to help… Identified critical areas of value and opportunities to exploit them
• What did you do to help… Nurture a culture of engaged people, delivery and achievement
• What did you do to help… Refined definition of current state, desired future state, and how to get there

• What did you do to help… Reduce complexity and create simplicity
• What did you do to help… Reduce the impact of siloes
• What did you do to help… Reduce risk of delivering incompatible or incomplete solutions

The investments in the consolidated Product and Professional Services teams in my first 3 months paid off very quickly.

It wasn’t an 18 Months wait for Visa, Mastercard or Amex to knock on Datacash’s Door. MasterCard arrived to visit us as part of a ‘Beauty Parade’, eager to gain a foothold in the Digital Commerce market. DataCash was one of 8 European Payment Service Providers assessed, and invited to respond to an RFP. I was requested by my CEO to lead the RFP response and subsequent presentations/meetings with MasterCard, ultimately including Board Members. As well as Product and Professional Services I was able to orchestrate Sales team involvement too.

We were able to present a full Roadmap and order book to MasterCard, as well as a fully co-ordinated approach and processes across all Teams and Functions – Including Technology. Within 1 more month MasterCard negotiated the acquisition of DataCash for $500M. This was a 50% premium to the Share Price/Market Capitalisation immediately before the offer. It was a 100% premium to the value on the day I had joined.

In the first year the Actions raised DataCash’s Annual Revenue by 25% from £36M to £45M, and the Roadmaps/New Business were set up to grow the business to £60M+ in the Second Year.

In principle MasterCard were going to give Autonomy to  DataCash, and all of the team that I established within Product & Professional Services went on to have very successful careers within MasterCard, then subsequently outside too – one member that I recruited making it to SVP level within 12 years, having started as ‘Assistant Product Manager.’

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

Typical areas where value is realised:

• What did you do to help… Enabling positive behavioural change
• What did you do to help… Effective delivery against financial targets
• What did you do to help… More satisfied and engaged employees with increased retention and productivity
• What did you do to help… Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
• What did you do to help… Successful, timely delivery of evidence based transformative change
• What did you do to help… Increased credibility, confidence and influence across the business
• What did you do to help… Enabling competitive differentiation and increasing market share
• What did you do to help… Increase customer acquisition, advocacy and lifetime value
• What did you do to help… More consistent and sustainable profitability and business growth
• What did you do to help… Viable, scalable and actionable roadmap to deliver innovation and change
• What did you do to help… Direct positive impact on internal and external customer satisfaction

Pains typically relieved include:

• What did you do to help… Inefficient or misaligned operating model and lack of business agility
• What did you do to help… Lack of exec sponsorship and track record
• What did you do to help… Lack of appropriate capabilities, skills, tools and methods
• What did you do to help… Unclear business strategy and requirements
• What did you do to help… Unclear or inefficient internal communications
• What did you do to help… Disconnect between culture and future vision
• What did you do to help… Misaligned goals across business and silos
• What did you do to help… Lack of clarity around the internal business ecosystem
• What did you do to help… Lack of clarity around market landscape
• What did you do to help… Lack of customer insight
• What did you do to help… Poor data strategy resulting in siloed, incomplete and poor quality data

Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:

Typical areas where value is realised:

• What did you do to help… Improved business agility and ability to rapidly respond to change and opportunity
• What did you do to help… Digital transformation that drives, moves and resets the organisation’s vision
• What did you do to help… Driving a culture of innovation for easier and faster adoption of future digital trends
• What did you do to help… Successful, timely delivery of evidence-based digital transformational outcomes; beyond digitisation

Pains typically relieved include:

• What did you do to help… Lack of transformation, change and agility mindset in leadership
• What did you do to help… Unclear and siloed business strategy leading to misaligned goals across the organisation that conflict with transformation
• What did you do to help… Lack of sufficient customer and market insight to inform digital transformation
• What did you do to help… Cynicism, lack of buy-in and resistance to change

• agile delivery
• innovation
• International markets
• FinTech
• Growth Strategy
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Creating Teams
• collaboration
• stakeholder management
• Customer Success
• Voice of the Customer

• Accelerated Solution Delivery
• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness

• Financial Services