Add-on strategy & integration
Did the last add-on deliver what was underwritten, and can anyone prove it?
Structure
Fixed scope per build
Delivery
Embedded
Output
Captured and proven deal value
Any one of the four can be the whole build, once the diagnostic has sized it.
What's actually going on
The banker leaves at close and the number stays on the model.
Cost and revenue gains were underwritten and never assigned to an owner. Integration runs as a task list rather than against the value the deal was bought for. Provider retention, referral leakage and credentialing gaps arrive as surprises, because nothing was tracking them against the thesis.
So the platform closes the second add-on before it can say whether the first one delivered, and the pattern repeats with more capital behind it.
What gets found, built and proven
01
Find it
What the assessment finds
Acquisition criteria
What the platform should buy and why, written before a target is in front of anyone.
Target qualification
How a candidate scores against those criteria, and what disqualifies one.
Build-versus-buy case
The positions the platform would have to add and the recurring costs it avoids by buying instead, quantified rather than asserted.
Diligence request tracker
Every request from every advisor and every internal owner in one numbered list, with a shared status vocabulary so the buyer, the seller, and each advisory firm report against the same field. The advisors do the diligence. The coordination layer is the build.
Board-ready deal readout
What diligence found, what it did not resolve, and each gap carried forward as a dated post-close priority.
Decision timeline
The path from that readout to a board decision, with the letter of intent, exclusivity, and modeling responsibilities named and dated.
02
Build it
What gets installed
Integration Charter
The board-approved document everything else runs against: strategic objectives, the integration scope, the governance model, success metrics, and the deal model's financial assumptions translated into planning inputs.
The integration management office
One control point for work that crosses functions. It carries the standing cadence and its forums, the escalation route that gives each risk and issue an owner and a date, and the status and KPI reporting to leadership. The Charter cascades to workstream leads from here.
Functional workplans
One per workstream, carrying dependencies, owners, timelines, and risks.
Day 1 readiness
Finance, human resources, systems, and operations ready for legal close.
Post-close tracking
Each milestone and each underwritten line measured against the deal model, on the Day 1, Day 30 and Day 100 marks.
Transition services exit and system cutover
The plan that moves the acquired business off seller-provided services and onto the platform's own systems.
03
Prove it
What the ledger shows
The benefit ledger
Value capture measured against what the deal model assumed, line by line, reconciled to the close and co-signed with the CFO.
The exit record
A history of integrations measured against their own underwriting.
When this tends to be the right call
At close
There is no written statement of what the platform should buy, and the criteria get argued after a target is already in front of everyone.
Each advisory firm and each internal owner reports diligence status in its own format against its own list.
Early hold
There is no board-approved document the integration runs against, and each function is working to its own version of the plan.
The last integration is technically complete and nobody can say what it produced.
Mid-hold
The third add-on takes as long as the first, and the playbook still lives in people's heads.
Milestones are marked complete and nothing measures them against what the deal model underwrote.
Did the last one deliver?
Start with a short diagnostic on this area. It sizes the gap before anything gets built.
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