Can Adaptive Insights be as disruptive to the stodgy corporate financial planning process as Salesforce has been for customer relationship management?
Citrix (CTXS) chairman Tom Bogan (a former CFO) thinks so, and he’s signing on as CEO at the end of January to steer the company’s next phase of growth. “I believe Adaptive is a really unique opportunity,” he told Fortune in a briefing about his appointment. “I was open to looking for a high-growth [software as a service] business that could be transformational.”
Adaptive Insights plays in a specialized category of the business intelligence market dubbed “corporate performance management.” Its software is used actively by more than 2,500 companies—including Coca-Cola, Yamaha, Bridgestone, and newly public big data companies Hortonworks and New Relic—for budgeting, forecasting and understanding potential results.
“We help CFOs better manage the business, to understand the path of what has happened and then use that information to project forward,” said Rob Hull, founder and chairman of Adaptive Insights, which is located in Palo Alto, Calif.
That task today is typically managed by juggling spreadsheets (the most likely scenario) or with legacy software applications from the likes of Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, or Prophix. Adaptive Insights touts a renewal rate of more than 100% for the past 12 months, plus bookings grew more than 50% during the same period. It also is fond of citing this statistic: it has more customers that all the other emerging cloud companies in this category. Notable players (based strictly on money raised) include Anaplan, Host Analytics, and Tidemark.
As you might expect, Bogan will spend his first 90 days meeting with customers and employees to refine his priorities. “At Bessemer [Venture Partners], we’ve evaluated thousands of cloud businesses over the years,” said partner Byron Deeter, who holds a board position. “Adaptive Insights embodies all the ingredients of a hot cloud company: hyper-growth, product innovation, and a very satisfied (and fast-growing) customers base. With Tom Bogan at the helm, their future shines even brighter).
Bogan, currently based in Boston but relocating soon, was formerly the president and COO of Rational Software, which grew to $750 million in an annual revenue before it was snapped up by IBM (IBM).
So far, Adaptive Insights has raised more than $100 million in private equity from investors including ONSET Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Information Venture Partners, Bessemer, Cardinal Venture Capital, and Monitor Ventures. Bogan is mum on the company’s initial public offering dreams, saying there’s no specific timeline. “Right now, we’re focused on a culture of customer success,” he said.
This item first appeared in the Jan. 13 edition of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology. Sign up here.
