President Lee Farabaugh

SERIAL entrepreneur Lee Inman Farabaugh today told VNC that it was early in Summer 2023 that she and her co-founders at Core10 Inc. recognized that she was the best person to lead the conversion of their company's professional-services line of business into the well defined MonarchPSG division that now looks ahead to a range of organic and inorganic growth opportunities.

Farabaugh acknowledged that while seamless client service, growth and profitability are reason enough to ramp-up MonarchPSG, the lift she envisions in coming years is likely to attract interest from would-be investors or bidders.

No such capital or M&A conversations have yet transpired at her division's level, she emphasized, adding that she and Core10 CEO Jeff Hanson share believe that Monarch now has a sound "blueprint" within Core10 and, thus, Monarch should now focus on generating positive cashflow for the next few years.

CEO Jeff Hanson

That said, at another point she added, "I would love to build Monarch into the type of entity that brings returns for investors, produces profits for Core10, and becomes attractive as an M&A target."

She also made clear she assigns great value to the impact that Core10/MonarchPSG continues to have as it provides potentially life-changing jobs that can lead to establishing personal and family wealth and well-being.

She said MonarchPSG is currently profitable on the basis of both cash and EBITDA, later adding that, by agreement, MonarchPSG is currently able to tap some Core10 talent for specialized functions.

Whatever the future holds, Farabaugh said Core10-Monarch management believes that SaaS companies eventually -- and sometimes repeatedly -- hit inflection points in their growth at which their ability to sell is outpacing their capacity for onboarding and supporting customers.

Yet, she said, many SaaS entrants understandably do not want to invest in the operational expense and learning curves associated with providing professional services internally, on a sustained basis.

So, her job is, in part, about showing "we're already experts at SaaS implementation and our learning curve is so small we can almost immediately hit backlog and pull client revenue forward."

MonarchPSG brings to bear CRM and SaaS platform expertise, with emphasis on implementation, configuration and customer success services for clients in B2B SaaS financial services, capital markets and wealth management industries.

MonarchPSG is unfolding at a time of growing global concern regarding risks associated with revenue-draining slowdowns in implementation, workflow design or configuration of platforms and solutions.

VNC research spotted some trends in which platform owners, in the current environment, have been reducing their populations of SaaS applications.

Farabaugh said she believes clear delineation of the respective Core10/Monarch business lines simplifies articulating market positioning and value propositions for each of the businesses.

Such clear articulations are vital when engaging with prospective clients, as well as with other services-market entrants who may variably be allies and-or competitors.

The company's larger clients include listed and Palo Alto-based INTAPP's DealCloud and Raleigh-based Pendo. DealCloud was Core10's first PSG customer, years ago.

She explained that DealCloud is "a CRM for financial services (PE, VC, Family Office, Fund of Funds, etc.). They were [the PSG unit's] first implementation client, and we now have a sizeable team and multi-year agreement with them." DealCloud was once a portco of Nashville-based FINTOP Capital.

Anthony Alexander

Farabaugh confirmed her business operations rely on VP-Operations and Delivery Anthony Alexander MBA, who previously served nearly five years with parent Core10 and now plays a role "crucial to Monarch's growth and future success."

The Core10 management team and board of directors are listed on this page.

Asked about professional advisors, Farabaugh noted attorneys with Nashville's Hughey Business Law and Atlanta's Morris Manning & Martin; PR services from Atlanta-based William Mills Agency; plus, Omaha-based PEER Agency for sales; accounting via Blankenship CPA, Nashville; and, banking with PinnacleBank and Thread Bank.

The MonarchPSG unit has 28 FTE, nearly all of whom are technologists, all working remotely most of the time, said Farabaugh.

Asked to walk us through the PSG unit's name change, she obliged:

By June last year, the group had settled on Monarch Professional Services Group as the new unit's brand, and by July 11 branding options were sorted and the MonarchPSG.io domain name registered.

By autumn 2023, Core10 executives were communicating the Monarch division, name, branding, and the story of its further investment in SaaS expertise to existing professional-services customers, as well as to its continuing software development customers.

Then, less than four months ago, on January 17, the company formally announced the Monarch division's debut. Related press release here.

That was a pretty fast deployment of a new brand and management structure from greenlight to market.

Achieving that speed was partly due to the fact that the PSG line of business, itself, had been operating within Core10 since about 2018, following a recommendation from investor FINTOP Capital that Core10 expand its pro-services business to support client implementations.

Asked about actual or potential competitors for MonarchPSG, per se, Farabaugh said it's naturally easy to point to such majors as Accenture and Deloitte, but she did not identify other early-stage entrants.

Farabaugh, 47, has been aboard Core10/Monarch more than eight years. She was previously cofounder of fintech Accrue Technologies and cofounder of PointClear Solutions.

Prior to that she worked for Northrop Grumman Information Technology, Delta Airlines and as a project manager for redesign of configurator solutions supporting Toyota, Lexus and Scion brands of Toyota North America.

She holds two master's degrees: an MS, Human-Computer Interaction from Georgia Tech (2005) and an MS, Health Informatics from University of Alabama at Birmingham.

She earned her bachelor's at Wake Forest University, and studied in the Rhode Island School of Design. Her LinkedIn is here.

Farabaugh was born in Tuscaloosa and reared in Charlotte, N.C. She and her family reside in Franklin, outside Nashville. VNC

. last edited 1809 30 April 2024