A working glossary of the terms, frameworks and concepts used across Ortent Advisory engagements. Written for board members, PE operating partners, founder-CEOs and counterparts evaluating advisory or fractional support in PE-backed B2B SaaS serving life sciences and digital health markets.
A two-week fixed-scope engagement that answers one board question with a defensible written artefact. Ten working days from kick-off to hand-off, priced fixed. Best when a board needs a defensible answer before its next meeting.
See also: Field guide: Sprint →
A quarter-long engagement that reads the whole commercial and operating model against evidence. Twenty questions across four operating components: Governance, Commercial, Delivery and Operating Discipline. Delivers a written diagnostic, a target operating model and a board pack. Best for new CEOs in their first hundred days, PE operating partners running portfolio reads, and chairs scoping a rebuild.
See also: Field guide: 90-day Diagnostic → · Target Operating Model →
Ongoing standing counsel to a CEO or Chair. Monthly working sessions, pre-board written commentary, and ad hoc calls between quarters. Three-month minimum, month-to-month thereafter. The engagement for calls that will not wait for the next board meeting.
See also: Field guide: Advisory →
A part-time, senior commercial leader embedded inside the executive team of a PE- or VC-backed growth-stage B2B SaaS business. Owns commercial architecture, partner-led growth and the design of how revenue compounds. Distinct from a fractional CRO, which owns the revenue number and the sales team.
See also: Field guide: Fractional CGO →
An independent member of a company's board with fiduciary and statutory duties under company law. Provides governance, challenge and network without operating responsibility for day-to-day management.
See also: Field guide: NED →
A senior advisor who attends and contributes to board meetings without fiduciary duty, voting rights or statutory responsibilities under company law. Most growth-stage businesses should start with a six to twelve month board advisor relationship before converting to a NED appointment.
See also: NED vs board advisor vs board observer →
A non-voting board attendee, typically representing an investor or partner, primarily in an information-flow role. Lowest commitment of the three independent board roles; rarely the right answer for a growth-stage business that wants senior input.
The framework Ortent uses to brief, hire and assess non-executive directors: Govern (ensure sound decisions and risk management), Challenge (push the executive team beyond comfortable assumptions), Introduce (open doors to customers, partners, talent and acquirers). Network is the job founders consistently underweight when hiring and the one PE buyers reward most.
See also: Field guide: Three jobs of a NED →
The four partner types that move ARR in B2B SaaS, each with different economics, enablement, deal cycle and reporting line: Resellers (sell on commission or margin), System Integrators (own implementation and customer success), ISVs (layer adjacent capability, often AI), and Instrument or Platform Vendors (bundle SaaS with hardware or instrument deals). Most partner programmes fail by conflating the four.
See also: Field guide: Four partner archetypes →
A symbiotic partner relationship in which both sides grow each other's capability and footprint, rather than transacting individual deals. As the partner's AI capability matures, the platform becomes a higher-value attach point; as the platform's customer base grows, the partner has a larger deployment surface. The structural innovation that distinguishes 2026 AI-era partner programmes from traditional channel programmes.
See also: Field guide: AI co-growth model →
The Ortent framework for evaluating and funding AI-enabled new revenue. Four revenue patterns, a six-axis qualifying lens, and a four-stage real-options funding ladder with evidence gates and kill criteria. Built for CFOs, PE operating partners and chairs who need to fund AI revenue candidates without letting a business case die of efficiency-saving mathematics.
See also: Interactive tool: Reinventors → · The Efficiency Trap →
The pattern where AI investment flows to efficiency savings because they are countable, while revenue reinvention dies in the business case because it is not. Countable AI wins are usually 5 to 15 per cent margin. Uncountable AI wins reshape the P&L. The trap is running both through the same investment committee at the same hurdle rate.
See also: Whitepaper: Fund Learning, Not Faith → · The AI Value Gap →
The Ortent research framework placing a business on two axes: the operational efficiency it has realised from AI, and the new revenue it has created from AI. Four quadrants emerge. Most companies concentrate in the low-revenue quadrants, mistake efficiency for transformation, and optimise themselves into a commodity. The survey behind the framework is at ortent.co/tools/ai-value-gap.
See also: Reinventors → · The Efficiency Trap →
The four-stage funding pattern for AI-enabled revenue candidates. Frame defines the pattern, market and one killer assumption. Probe tests that assumption with the smallest evidence gate the board will trust. Pilot runs a paying test with a real customer. Scale commits capital once the economics are visible. Each stage carries a written evidence gate and pre-agreed kill criteria, so failure at any stage is a decision, not a defeat.
See also: Reinventors → · Evidence Gates → · Kill Criteria →
The pre-agreed piece of evidence a stage must produce before the next stage of funding releases. Not a KPI, not a forecast, a single observable outcome that either exists or does not. Evidence gates convert "trust the team" into "trust the process" and make AI investment auditable at board level.
See also: Real-Options Funding Ladder →
The pre-agreed conditions under which a funded AI revenue candidate is stopped. Written down before the money is committed, signed off by the board, and treated as a decision aid, not a punishment. Kill criteria are what let a company fund several AI probes at once without any single one becoming political.
See also: Real-Options Funding Ladder → · Evidence Gates →
The five scale-readiness foundations Ortent uses to read a growth-stage B2B SaaS business: Commercial Model, Go-to-Market, Deployment, Retention and Support Discipline, and Organisation. Fifteen markers across the five, traffic-light scored, with a decision-rule verdict. The lens PE operating partners and chairs use to decide whether a business is ready to scale or ready to be rebuilt first.
See also: Interactive tool: Five Questions Diagnostic → · Whitepaper: Scale-Readiness is a State, Not a Motion →
The interview question Ortent treats as the single most important when hiring a NED or board advisor: "in the first six months, which three customers, three partners, three investors and three acquirers would you make warm introductions to?" A candidate who cannot answer with names is a governance hire, not a network hire.
See also: Field guide: Why founders underweight the network job →
A heuristic for hiring senior leaders. The hire that would fail a "would I have a beer with this person" test is usually the one that changes the company. Diversity of background, perspective and operating style beats cultural duplication when assembling an executive team.
See also: Essay: Don't Hire Yourself →
The discipline of building a B2B SaaS business through partners (resellers, system integrators, ISVs, instrument or platform vendors) rather than direct sales alone. Compounds revenue without compounding cost, raises win rates and deal size, and produces a quality-of-revenue mix PE buyers reward at exit.
See also: Field guide: Partner-Led Growth →
Closed-won annual recurring revenue where the partner is the primary source of the deal. The headline metric for a partner programme, and the one PE will look at in diligence. PE buyers price partner-sourced ARR at a higher multiple than direct-sales-only ARR because it implies a market position rather than just a sales team.
Closed-won ARR where a partner materially accelerated or shaped the deal but was not the source. Measured separately from partner-sourced ARR because it is real but easily double-counted.
The number of months it takes for the gross profit from a new customer to repay the sales and marketing cost of acquiring them. The single most efficient indicator of whether a growth motion is compounding or burning. Under 12 months for great B2B SaaS, 12 to 24 for good, 24 to 36 for tolerable, over 36 for something the board should treat as a structural problem, not a spend problem.
See also: Field guide: When to hire a fractional CGO → · Quality of Revenue →
The composition and durability of recurring revenue, beyond the headline ARR figure. Includes proportion sourced or influenced by partners, expansion mechanics, customer concentration, contract length and gross retention. The lens PE buyers and exit-stage diligence apply to assess what the revenue is actually worth.
The deliberate design of how a SaaS business converts product, market position, partner ecosystem and pricing into compounding revenue. The remit a fractional Chief Growth Officer owns. Distinct from sales operations or revenue execution, which are the remit of a CRO.
Advisory delivered by people who have run the relevant function inside operating businesses, rather than career consultants. The Ortent posture: pattern-matching from lived experience, not slides from a methodology deck.
The level of scrutiny a commercial story must survive when reviewed by buyer-side commercial diligence in a PE exit or strategic acquisition. The standard a fractional CGO or NED helps the executive team prepare against in the 12 to 18 months before a sale process.
See also: Target Operating Model → · Operating Maturity →
A one-page map of how the business actually works, organised as flows rather than as an org chart. Conventionally laid out in four layers: management (strategy and its execution), customer lifecycle (acquire to bill), product lifecycle (build to end of life) and supporting functions (finance, HR, IT, risk, legal). Each component on the map has a named owner, a codified process, a risk score and a quarterly review. Done properly, a TOM doubles as a board artefact, a hiring spec, a risk map and the substrate AI deployment lands on. The interactive version on this site sits at ortent.co/tools/operating-model.
The combination of process, governance, data quality and management discipline that distinguishes a scale-up that survives diligence from one that does not. Often the gating factor in exit valuation, alongside quality of revenue.
See also: Target Operating Model → · Diligence-Grade Scrutiny →
A residual-risk standard. A risk is at ALARP when further reduction would require effort or cost disproportionate to the safety, financial or operational benefit gained. Originates in UK health and safety legislation and used heavily in clinical safety (DCB 0129 / 0160), nuclear, oil and gas, rail and aviation. On an operating-model risk register, the ALARP column records whether the residual risk has been accepted by the owner as As Low As Reasonably Practicable, is still pending further mitigation, or has not yet reached an acceptable level.
A B2B software business with a private equity sponsor on the cap table, typically post-Series B or later, often with a 3 to 5 year hold thesis. The primary client profile for Ortent engagements.
B2B software businesses serving life sciences research, biopharma, genomics, clinical trials, lab informatics, regulatory compliance and adjacent buying centres. Distinct from horizontal SaaS in regulatory posture, partner ecosystem density, patient-safety boundaries and buying centre complexity.
B2B software businesses serving health systems, payers, providers and patient-facing care delivery, including NHS commissioning, clinical pathway orchestration, virtual care and care coordination. Sits inside the same buying centres and regulators as life sciences but with different end users.
An exit process that runs an IPO preparation and a strategic acquisition process in parallel, advancing both until the board can choose with full information. Used when multiple paths are credible and the board wants optionality through to the final decision. The structure Andrew Wyatt chaired at Apertio Ltd, which delivered the $240 million sale to Nokia in 2009.
See also: Field guide: Chairing a dual-track exit at Apertio →
The decision-making units that procure SaaS in life sciences and digital health: NHS, AHSN, NHSE, NICE, MHRA, Genomics England, payer organisations, integrated provider networks, biopharma R&D and IT. Each operates differently from corporate B2B buyers, with distinct evaluation criteria, procurement timescales and stakeholder maps.
If you would use one of these terms differently inside your own business, that is usually a good basis for a conversation. We book 30 minutes and look at the actual problem.
Book a 30-minute intro callFor a board, advisory or fractional engagement, or a working call on the next stage, email directly. Thirty minutes is usually enough to test fit.
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