LLR buys Viventium, bets on payroll for the post-acute market

LLR Partners is expected to announce later today that it has acquired a majority stake in Viventium, a Brooklyn-based developer of software aimed at handling workforce management in post-acute healthcare. Existing investors, ABS Capital Partners, Camden Partners and Viventium’s founders have maintained minority stakes. The deal closed January 31.

PE hub spoke with LLR partner Sasank Aleti, who joined Viventium’s board, in an exclusive interview. LLR vice president Jennifer Schoen also joined the board.

The Philadelphia-based, lower-mid-market private equity firm intends to help scale Viventium’s growth and look for M&A opportunities, Aleti said.

Viventium’s software aims to create seamless API integrations with workforce management systems and preferred partners to create a frictionless experience for post-acute-care providers and their employees.

Post-acute healthcare encompasses home-care agencies, skilled nursing facilities, hospices and in-patient rehabilitation services, to name a few.

Employee turnover in those markets can be sometimes upwards of 50 percent, Aleti said. “In order for those businesses to operate, they need nurses and care workers to get into the facilities, and that high turnover makes things very difficult to serve their patients if they don’t have their people.”

Workers in the post-acute market must adhere to the varying payroll systems, laws and tax jurisdictions of each state they work in, which can oftentimes differ greatly.

“To factor all of that in an automated way is something Viventium has done a really good job of, because they built a lot of these workflows into the software, whereas other payroll companies don’t really have that purpose-built functionality,” he said.

The application is “very sticky and highly recurring” Aleti added, but the specific market vertical is what made the investment attractive. “It’s payroll for the post-acute market, and that’s a market that has really challenging human capital dynamics in terms of retaining, paying and engaging employees.”

Before looking at Viventium, LLR had a thesis in the payroll market that was specifically focused on vertical market payroll applications, and within that thesis, Aleti said healthcare was the most interesting, because of the challenging workforce dynamics, in addition to the complexity of healthcare payrolls.

LLR is looking to expand the software into “different markets to anything around healthcare customer management, time and attendance, helping identify and recruit talent for their customers,” Aleti said. “Adjacent to payroll but still in the same space.”

LLR invests in the technology and healthcare sectors. Similar investments include Corestream, developer of benefits software systems for employees, and CareATC, an employee-population health management system.