Kim Crawford Goodman has been CEO of Portland-based software maker Smarsh for two years. In that time she has led the company in returning to its offices with a hybrid model built around several central offices, as well as meaningful changes in the leadership staff.
“There have been a number of changes at Smarsh over the last two years. I would tell you that they have resulted in a stronger, better company that continues to be at the forefront of its industry, continues to grow, continues to partner in quality and meaningful way with institutions, particularly in financial services from the very largest to the very smallest.”
The company, which has more than 1,200 employees globally, makes software used by customers in highly regulated industries to capture and archive communication data from across different communication channels. The company’s Portland headquarters has about 200 employees with plans for more growth.
We spoke with Crawford Goodman about the company’s work in AI — it’s had artificial intelligence gleaning analytics for customers for a while — its ownership and its eye toward acquisitions.
Smarsh has used artificial intelligence and machine learning in its product for years now, but now that generative AI is all the buzz, has that shifted Smarsh’s AI strategy?
We’re at a point where we are seeing a lot of expansion and that expansion is definitely front and center with many of our clients and definitely front and center inside our company and with our board. One area of expansion, and you see it with gen AI coming into our capture part of our category (such as the new ChatGPT integration). Another area of expansion is how gen AI will be used for efficiency both at our company and at our clients.
What does that look like?
A perfect example of that is we are starting a pilot with clients. How they would utilize our communications data to build the right large language models and then use those large language models to automate some things as it relates to ensuring compliance, doing follow up investigations, etc. to ensure that when they find problems, they go deeper to determine is it really a problem and if so what do they do about it.
And inside Smarsh?
The same is true inside of our own firm. So one of the most prominent areas for gen AI as an example, is customer service and customer support. We are trying to be thoughtful (as to) how we utilize that in our own service operation, just like we're working with our clients, to determine how to build the large language models with our data so that their own chatbots are having the most efficiency.
Smarsh is private equity-owned, I’m curious what you see as the next milestone in terms of exits and ownership?
We’ve had the same private equity owner for the last seven years (K1 Investment Management) and that has been very productive for the company and they have been good partners. They have helped the company grow and expand, especially inorganically when it has made sense for the company to acquire other companies. Smarsh has successfully acquired eight companies in the last eight years and they have been value added to us.
The second thing I'd say is we, myself and the leadership team, at the company are extremely focused on the value that our company can deliver to our clients and the quality of our technology and the growth and prosperity of Smarsh. So far, we've had excellent board of directors and owners that have supported that. And I expect that we will continue to have excellent owners and board of directors no matter what form it takes.
Are you in the market for M&A?
At Smarsh we are open for business for acquisitions that make sense for our strategy, our clients and our platform. So we are actively in the market looking. I don't have anything to announce right now, but we're always happy to consider people that are relevant to us.
What do you look for in an acquisition target?
People have to be doing things relevant to communications data, relevant to the AI that can be applied to communications data, relevant to the insights garnered from that data. That’s No. 1. We are looking for quality technology. It’s one thing for people to have an idea. It’s (another) for people to actually have operating, delivered technology that is of quality and doesn’t have too many bugs, actually does what it says it will do and has a good uptime. So the second thing we're looking for is quality technology. The third thing which usually goes hand in hand with the second is we're looking for companies that have quality, people who want to be a part of the Smarsh journey.
