Chapter 3: Research Process

As a research analyst at PlainView Research, your role is crucial in ensuring that our clients receive accurate, comprehensive, and relevant market maps tailored to their specific needs. Your primary responsibilities are to evaluate lists of target companies provided by our team against the project’s inclusion criteria and to complete research profiles of companies we are entering into the database. This chapter explains your key responsibilities and the step-by-step process we must follow when conducting research. 

Step 1: Understanding Project and Client

Before you begin any research, it’s crucial to first understand what the project entails and who the client is. This foundational step ensures that your research is aligned with the client’s strategic goals. In this step, you will:

  • Understand the Client: Learn about the client's business model, industry focus, and what they are looking to achieve through this project.

  • Clarify the Investment Type: Determine whether the client is seeking a platform investment (a company to serve as a foundation for further acquisitions) or an add-on investment (a company to complement an existing business). This distinction will guide the type of companies you’ll be looking for.

  • Review the Project Brief: If available, review the marketing book or project brief provided by the client or senior analysts. This document typically outlines the strategy, financial parameters (e.g., revenue, EBITDA), and specific industry or service focus for potential target companies. Keep this document handy as it will serve as a reference throughout the project.

  • Ask Key Questions: If any details are unclear, such as geographical limitations or the client’s tolerance for companies with previous funding, make sure to clarify these. Understanding these nuances is critical for aligning your research with the client’s preferences

Step 2: Industry Orientation

As a research analyst, for you, our projects will essentially consist of two steps: determining whether the companies we provide you with are fits or not for the project, and entering key enterprise information to make company profiles fully complete. This section explains the first part of this process.

Under the External Research panel of the project, you will be able to view a list of companies we have imported into the external database for you to review. These companies are extracted from external sources - primarily, secondary research platforms (Pitchbook, Orbis, Crunchbase, etc.) and trade shows. 

The main responsibility of the research analyst is to check whether each company on the list aligns with the client’s specific criteria. Based on this evaluation, you should mark each company as a FIT, Back Burner (BB), or Not a Fit (NAF) for the project. FIT denotes companies that are suitable for inclusion in a research project, while Back Burner (BB) refers to targets which may be relevant to the client, for example, they may be active in the sector we are looking at, but there maybe some specific reasons why we should not include them as a 100% fit. For example, they may be outside of the revenue range of target companies or slightly outside of a client’s target geography. Not a Fit (NAF)

Criteria for determining targets as fits typically include: 

  • Product/Service Offering: What line(s) of business does the target company operate in? Does it match the industry or sector the client is interested in?

  • Size: Does the company fall within the desired revenue or employee range? Is it large enough to meet the client’s growth objectives?

  • Geography: Where is the company headquartered, and what regions does it serve? Does its geographical presence align with the client’s strategic goals?

  • Ownership Status: Is the company privately or publicly owned? Is it a subsidiary of a larger parent company? Has it been recently acquired or undergone significant ownership changes?

For companies that are BB or NAF, we should further give the reason why the company was labelled as such. In doing so, we should choose one of the following options from the FEED (Feedback) column:

  • Financials - Revenue: The company is outside the target revenue of the project.

  • Financials - FTE: The company has either too many or too few employees for the project. 

  • Financials - EBITDA: The EBITDA of the company is too small/large for the project.

  • Ownership - Division of a Public Company: The company is a subsidiary of a public business, and as such, is not a fit for the project. Sometimes, buy-side clients will not be interested in public-affiliated companies. 

  • Ownership - Division of a VC/PE: The company is a subsidiary of a public business, and as such, is not a fit for the project. Sometimes, buy-side clients will not be interested in acquiring businesses that already have financial backing. 

  • Operational - Location: The company is outside target geography for the project. 

  • Operational - Industry:  The company operates in a sector that is outside of the scope for the project. 

  • Operational - Markets/Customers: the company’s target end markets, customers, or applications are outside the scope of the project. 

  • Operational - Products: the company’s product/service offering is not of interest to the client. 

  • Project - Duplicate: the company has already been entered into the database, and should therefore not be added again.

  • Project - Client: the company has been rejected or blacklisted by the client.

  • LAB - Status label for the company, denoting whether the company is a fit, backburner, or not a fit for the active project. Formal Name - The full legal name of the company. This should include any legal enterprise suffixes (e.g., Inc., Ltd., GmbH, etc.) 

  • Website - The company URL. This should be your first source when determining whether the company is a fit or not. 

  • Ownership - The ownership status of the company. More details on how we label company ownership can be found in Chapter 5: Key Terms. 

  • Description - a brief summary of the company’s key business activities. 

  • Offerings - The 3 main products/services offered by the company. 

When making decisions on what status to classify each company, consider the flow chart below. 

Step 5: Target Profiling

With a clear understanding of the project’s scope and client objectives, the next step is to gain a solid grasp of the industry you’ll be researching. This foundational knowledge will inform your research process, allowing you to better evaluate companies and their fit within the market. In this step, you will:

  • Study the Industry Overview: Begin by reviewing industry reports, market studies, and any materials provided by the client or internally. This will help you understand the key trends, challenges, and opportunities in the sector.

  • Understand the Industry Language: Every industry has its own terminology and jargon. Familiarise yourself with the common terms, business models, and technologies specific to the sector. This will help you navigate industry-specific information more effectively during your research.

  • Explore Current Trends: Look for recent developments in the industry, such as technological advancements, regulatory changes, or shifts in consumer behaviour. These trends can significantly impact the types of companies that will be attractive to private equity firms.

This step will not only help you get up to speed on the project but also equip you with the context needed to make informed decisions throughout the research process.

Step 3: View the Research and Project Dashboards

Additional Responsibilities

Upon logging into the PlainView Research database platform and going to the home page, you will find the dashboard which lists the active projects we should be working on, and their current status. You can also use this page to search for specific companies in the database, or to search the database, using different filters. Projects that need our attention will be listed under the Actions tab.

In the Project Setup tab, you can view the key inclusion criteria for target companies to familiarise yourself with what companies we should mark as fits for the project. 

  • Buyer: The legal name of the client company associated with the project.

  • Project Type: The nature of the research project we are conducting. This will usually be one of three types:

    • Buy-side M&A - The client is looking to make a series of add-on acquisitions to grow its business. Clients for these projects are typically a private equity company that owns the business, but we may occasionally work with the corporations themselves. For these projects, we will typically produce several lists of target companies for the client, typically at 2-week intervals.

    • Sell-side M&A - The client is looking to sell their business to a private equity or strategic buyer in their same industry. Similarly to buy-side M&A, we tend to produce multiple lists for these projects on a periodic basis. 

    • Due Diligence - The client is looking to understand all the major players and any potential acquisition target available in a certain industry niche. To that end, we will typically only produce one comprehensive list for these clients in a span of 2-3 weeks. 

  • Other Criteria: 1-2 sentences describing the nature of the search and the target companies for the research project. 

  • Revenue: The target range of annual revenues of the enterprises included in the research lists. 

  • Ownership: The ownership status of companies we should include.

  • Countries: The region(s) that target companies should be headquartered in. 

  • Business Model: The business model that the client company uses to generate revenue. Labels are explained in Chapter 5: Key Terms. 

  • Industry - The overarching sector that the client company operates in.

Step 4: Evaluate Targets Against Inclusion Criteria Using the Research Panel

Once you have identified companies that meet the inclusion criteria, the next step is to move onto the Target Profiling tab. Here, we should gather and input the key enterprise information about each fit. This data will be sourced from both public resources (typically company websites), and from third-party, primarily Pitchbook and Orbis, that we will provide you with access to. 

To choose the company to profile, select it from the table on the left-hand side. You can enter most of the information on the panel on the right-hand side. For due diligence projects and for database upkeep companies, we will only need to add the information listed in the Target Profiling tab. You will notice that several of the fields in the Target Profiling section are already populated with information from where they were originally extracted from. You do not need to action these fields, short of ensuring that they follow consistent formatting. The information and format required for each field is described in detail within Chapter 5: Key Terms.

To add additional details, such as marketing and contact information, you will need to open the profile page for the company you are researching. This will usually only be necessary for buy- and sell-side M&A projects, where we are also outreaching companies on the clients’ behalf. For due diligence projects and general company profiling, you will only need to check and enter the information displayed in the table on the right-hand side of the Target Profiling tab. 

To view the whole company profile page, you can access the profile page by double-clicking the name of the company from the table on the left-hand side of the Target Profiling page. For details on the information and exact formatting required for each section, visit Chapter 5: Key Terms. Areas we must collect info on include: 

  • General Descriptive Information: Collect and record essential details such as the company’s legal name, abbreviated name, brief description of operations, headquarters location, parent company (if applicable), and current ownership status.

  • Financial Data: Compile financial metrics that are critical for assessing the company’s suitability as a target, including revenue, EBITDA, operating margin, and the number of full-time employees (FTE).

  • Products/Services Offered: Document the specific products and services the company provides, ensuring this information aligns with the client’s interest in the sector.

Once you have entered all of the fields, press Save and Submit to Project.

Database Upkeep

In addition to the work on our active projects, we will ask that you continue to complete research on the companies that are populated in the Database Upkeep tab (accessible from the home page), to further augment our database. This will be completed in a very similar fashion to the process of profiling companies for active projects. Simply press the Edit Profile button on any company in the Database Upkeep tab, viewable on the database home page. This will bring up the profile page for the company you are editing. For detailed information on the information and formatting needed for each field, see Chapter 4.

Conducting Independent Research

In cases where our usual sources for companies do not fully meet the project’s needs, you may be required to conduct independent research to identify additional potential targets. This could involve:

  • Utilising Search Engines: Performing targeted searches to uncover companies that may not be included in our existing databases.

  • Exploring Trade Show Lists: Reviewing lists of exhibitors or participants from relevant trade shows to find companies that fit the client’s criteria.

  • Leveraging Industry Associations: Using directories or membership lists from industry associations to identify potential targets.

Independent research tasks will only need to be completed on an infrequent basis, and as such, we will direct you on the specific requirements of any of these tasks, as and when they arise.