INSIGHT-POWERED STRATEGY

How EY-Parthenon and Potloc delivered actionable CTO strategies

As the leader of EY-Parthenon’s Software Strategy Group in Continental Europe, Sander van Weele helps software companies and investors keep up with fast-changing market dynamics. His team doesn’t just react to client needs—it anticipates them. Take a peek behind their recent thought leadership study with Potloc, which surveyed 300 software CTOs across Europe and uncovered future-ready insights for players in a highly competitive industry.

Share this piece

Challenge

EY-Parthenon’s Software Strategy Group (SSG) wanted to publish a robust report based on insights from European software CTOs to help their clients (and the broader software community) understand industry dynamics, improve technical quality, and unlock growth opportunities. Gathering these insights through primary research required a partner capable of reaching the right decision-makers.

Solution

EY-Parthenon chose Potloc for its proven ability to reach niche decision-makers and its expertise in conducting primary research. Potloc’s multi-source sampling approach provided access to hard-to-reach software CTOs across Europe. Potloc’s expertise in respondent acquisition ensured they gathered high-quality data from 300 industry leaders, providing EY-Parthenon with the intelligence required to support their clients' strategic goals.

Impact

  • Niche respondent acquisition
    Potloc reached 300 CTOs from software companies across 9 countries, providing EY-Parthenon with invaluable insights into market dynamics and challenges.
  • Expert-driven survey optimization
    Potloc worked closely with EY-Parthenon to iterate and refine the survey design, ensuring the questions not only captured the required data but also kept respondents engaged. This proactive approach helped extract nuanced, high-quality insights that fed directly into strategic decision-making.
  • Zero-touch data quality controls
    His team “didn't need to spend too much time in reviewing the quality of the data set, because Potloc did that before they basically delivered the survey responses,” explained Van Weele. Potloc’s 14 human and AI checkpoints eliminated fraudulent and disengaged respondents ahead of time, delivering only the highest quality respondents. “The team was able to focus on doing analysis on the data output instead.”
  • Simplified data analysis
    Leveraging the smart analysis features on Potloc, the EY-Parthenon team pulled survey insights faster — skipping the need for time-consuming data exports to Excel.
« Potloc alleviated our team from being required to do some of the hygiene-related and cumbersome tasks that are normally part of this kind of process. »
Sander Van Weele Partner at EY-Parthenon Heading the Software Strategy Group in Continental Europe

Leveraging the Insights

With Potloc’s support, EY Parthenon streamlined the research process, providing timely and accurate insights that enabled Sander’s team to deliver strategic guidance to their software clients.

This collaboration has strengthened EY Parthenon’s position as a trusted advisor in the software industry, helping clients navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Dive into the findings
EY - CTO survey report cover