AutoData Systems in Minnetonka was the perfect acquisition for a group of local investors including Matt Paschke, whose day job is portfolio manager at Leuthold Weeden in Minneapolis.

He and a loosely connected group of finance pros like to buy established companies that have lost their “sponsor,” for whatever reason. “We would search out orphan businesses,” he said. “We’re always on the lookout. We’ve done a number of these and this fit.”

Started in 1993 as a small division of a larger firm, AutoData sells software that reads handwriting and captures data from surveys that people fill in by hand on paper—believe it or not in an online age, still a necessary format for health care organizations, government programs, educational institutions and more.

The investors brought in as CEO Charlie Lehmann, a newly minted attorney and a friend of Paschke. His initial charge was to make the company profitable, which he’s done over the past 18 months.

Now Lehmann needs to craft a strategic direction to start growing again, and for that he turned to the Upsize Growth Challenge experts as one of this year’s two winning companies.

Bridget Manahan, a commercial banker with Western Bank and an Upsize Growth Challenge expert, suggests he break the project into steps. First comes homework, researching the company’s current markets and the competition in each, and tapping knowledge held by that group of investors plus Lehmann’s informal “kitchen cabinet” of advisers.

Then comes communication, in which he discusses the plan with his investors to make sure they’re buying in. “Overall, there needs to be a commitment to the strategic plan,” she says. “It’s sitting down and calling out those goals, and that also means all of you have a common understanding where this is going.

“I always ask business owners I work with, what does it look like going forward?” Manahan says. When that big picture is in place, the tactics to get there become relatively simple to craft.