Quality of Operations™ and Technology Due Diligence Identified Key Personnel Risk

The Challenge

TriVista was hired by a private equity firm to conduct a Quality of Operations™ and Technology Due Diligence assessment on a leading professional services consulting firm. The target company is a platform investment opportunity that the private equity firm plans to support with the continued growth of the business through both organic and M&A expansion.

Our Approach

TriVista conducted a due diligence assessment of key business value streams and associated IT support systems with a focus on:

• Mapped process from lead-to-quote and order-to-cash value streams to identify key risks and opportunities for improvement
• Assessed talent management, project management, culture, and labor utilization tools and techniques
• Assessed technology system business enablement, scalability, and governance

The Results

No operational or technology related red flags were found, however, a concern around key personnel risk was identified and recommended to mitigate the risk by assuring key leadership rolls a significant portion of their proceeds into the new legal entity post close of acquisition. Other post-close recommendations included:

• Optimizing operational management controls by linking projects, timecards, expense management, and finance through Salesforce.com to enable a single, cohesive environment to minimize more manual consolidation practices that are currently in place
• Consider moving additional employee service lines into other staff augmentation verticals that are at a higher end price point ($200+ for higher end IT, etc.) versus trying to build intellectual capital around structured offerings like M&A support, Merger Integrations, etc.
• Transition to move consultant employee workforce into a more traditional employment contract versus the 1-year contract employment agreement contracts currently in place to allow for an employee development program and path for career progression