Operating Diligence
Know what you're actually taking over.
Financial diligence tells you what the business earned. It does not tell you what happens on the first Monday after the owner stops answering the phone.
What we evaluate
The operating layer underneath the numbers — how work actually moves, who holds it together, and how much of that transfers at close.
- Owner dependency
Which decisions, relationships and knowledge live only with the seller. - System dependency
What breaks if a tool, integration or single admin disappears. - Revenue workflows
How demand becomes a quote, a job and a collected invoice. - Software
What is licensed, what is used, what is quietly a spreadsheet. - Vendors
Concentration, informal terms, handshake arrangements. - Operational continuity
What survives turnover, absence and volume change. - Risks
Single points of failure, compliance exposure, undocumented process. - Transferability
How much of the operation can be handed to a new operator.
What you receive
Operating map of the target
How the business actually runs, drawn from the work rather than from the CIM.
Dependency and risk register
Ranked, with an estimate of what each one costs to remediate after close.
First-100-days operating plan
What to stabilise first, what to leave alone, and what creates value early.
We are not accountants, attorneys or brokers, and this is not financial, legal or investment advice. Operating diligence sits alongside your financial and legal workstreams — it does not replace them.
Who this is for
- Search funds evaluating a single target
- Independent sponsors and small-cap private equity
- Strategic acquirers buying an operating competitor
- Business buyers taking over an owner-run company
- Succession operators inheriting a business from a founder
- Owners preparing to sell who want the dependencies gone first
Reduce uncertainty.
Increase optionality.
For search funds, independent sponsors, private equity, strategic acquirers and business buyers. Tell us the target's industry and roughly what stage you're at.