← Case Studies Named with permission

Data diligence for a private equity buyer. Four weeks from first call to a costed day-zero plan in the deal model.

Crawford McMillan did a thorough data readiness assessment for us in just 4 weeks from start to finish. The work was deliberately complementary to our financial diligence workstream and gave us clear, practical insights, as well as recommendations with costings which we were able to use to inform our investment decision.

Tom BiddlePartner, MML Capital Partners
4 weeksfrom kickoff to the deal team readout
25interviews across the group's entities and functions
6recommendations, sequenced and sized
Day zerothe plan the new owners started with

MML Capital

MML Capital Partners is a London private equity firm investing in mid-market businesses.

The question

The financial due diligence had done its job on the numbers. MML's view was that the underlying business was a good one. The open question was whether the data and systems beneath the numbers could carry the plan MML had for the business, and what it would cost to make sure.

MML wanted that answered before it committed capital, and if it went ahead, it wanted the answer to double as the plan for day zero.

Crawford McMillan's role

A four-week Data Readiness Assessment, run alongside the financial due diligence, delivered by a London-based team with Graeme Crawford leading.

  • Interviewed 25 people across the group's entities and functions, and mapped how data moves through the business from the customer record to the group accounts
  • Scored the current state on Crawford McMillan's four-level maturity framework, by function and by data domain, so the deal team could see where the group stood and how far apart its parts were
  • Separated the structural constraints from the ones that were a matter of effort, and set out which ones mattered for MML's plan
  • Made six recommendations, sequenced Fix, Operate, Build, each sized with a team shape and a monthly cost
  • Built the cost views the deal team asked for, from the external delivery team through to the internal run-rate after handover, and a day-zero plan by month
  • Delivered the readout to the deal team in 30 minutes, with a report written so the management team could use it as its first 90 days

What changed

  • MML's deal team put the findings and the costed plan into its investment model before signing.
  • The transaction signed with the data programme underwritten in the numbers.
  • The platform decision was sequenced after the data foundation, so no system gets replaced before the data model exists to move into it.
  • The new owners and the management team started with a plan rather than a diagnosis.

Published with the permission of MML Capital Partners. The portfolio company is not named.