Software maker Kantata has appointed former Sage and SAP executive Jesse Weber as its vice president of partner alliances.

Kantata sells a so-called professional service automation, or PSA, platform. Consulting firms use it to track the costs they incur while carrying out client projects and detect work delays. Kantata’s software can also speed up certain other tasks. A consultancy’s HR team, for example, can use a built-in forecasting tool to determine how many employees should be hired next quarter.

Weber will be responsible for expanding Kantata’s partner ecosystem. The software maker plans to onboard not only consultancies but also private equity firms. Over the past few years, private equity firms have bought stakes in several of the world’s largest professional services companies and acquired many smaller players. That has turned such funds into an important sales channel for PSA software providers.

Several major tech firms have formed teams focused specifically on managing their relationships with private equity firms. Before joining Kantata, Weber led such a team at Sage. As the software maker’s global head of private equity alliances, he built relationships with more than 200 private equity and venture capital firms. He earlier held similar roles at SAP.

The reason private equity firms represent an important market for software vendors is that they not only buy companies but also sell them. Before private equity firms sell a consultancy, they boost its margins to increase the asking price. One of the most common ways to go about the task is to equip the consultancy’s employees with new software that can make them more efficient.