Industry

    Private equity: consolidate the stack you just bought, on the clock

    Who this is for

    Operating partners and portfolio CFOs who just closed on a business, inherited its systems, and are racing the clock to show value creation. You paid a rich multiple on an operation that runs on duplicated tooling and data nobody trusts.

    What you'll walk away with

    A baselined combined run-rate, a consolidation sequence across overlapping stacks, and clean data underneath the reporting the deal thesis depends on—proved on a blueprint before anyone starts building.

    Place yourself first

    Count how many of these describe your team today. The read underneath tells you where to start, so you don't spend the quarter fixing the wrong layer.

    • Two overlapping stacks now sit under one umbrella, each with its own ERP, CRM, and reporting.
    • The reporting you inherited can't be reconciled to the model you underwrote.
    • Nobody can produce a combined software run-rate across the portfolio in under a week.
    • Customer data sits in silos, so cross-sell across the portfolio can't be evidenced.
    • Contracts signed pre-close carry escalations and auto-renewals nobody has diaried.
    • Every operational decision waits on a data pull that takes days and arrives contested.

    Early

    3+ symptoms: you're pre-baseline. The first artifact is a combined inventory and a data map, before any consolidation decision.

    Building

    2 symptoms: you know the overlap and need sequencing that survives the 100-day window.

    Optimizing

    0-1 symptoms: reporting is clean. Move to value creation—cross-portfolio motions and the next acquisition's integration playbook.

    What's actually going wrong

    You inherited a broken system at a rich multiple

    The thesis assumed operational leverage. The reality is duplicated tooling, overhead built for a different owner, and processes documented nowhere.

    What it costs
    Every quarter spent discovering the operation is a quarter not spent improving it—and the hold period doesn't extend to accommodate discovery.
    What fixing it looks like
    A structured baseline in weeks, not quarters: what runs the business, what it costs, what duplicates what, and what can be cut without breaking revenue.

    Overlapping ERP and system spend across the umbrella

    Each acquired business brought its own ERP, CRM, and reporting layer. Consolidation is obvious in the deck and politically hard in practice.

    What it costs
    Duplicate license and admin spend on every capability, compounding across each add-on acquisition.
    What fixing it looks like
    Consolidate by capability with a named migration path and owner per system, sequenced so the highest-savings, lowest-disruption moves land first.

    Dirty data makes every decision slower and less defensible

    Numbers disagree between systems, so each board pack requires reconciliation work before it can be trusted.

    What it costs
    You can't evaluate the current or future state of the business on data you have to argue about first—and that slows every decision that drives the multiple.
    What fixing it looks like
    One definition layer, one account system of record, and integration built where it can actually carry the load. Clean data is the prerequisite for everything else on this page.

    Value creation measured in narrative, not dollars

    Cost-out initiatives get reported as activity—tools consolidated, headcount adjusted—without a defensible link to run-rate.

    What it costs
    Boards discount savings they can't trace, and the initiative loses its budget in the next cycle.
    What fixing it looks like
    Baseline before, measure after, and tie each consolidation to a specific contract and a specific dollar figure.

    Where post-acquisition consolidation lands

    LayerWhat teams usually runWhere the gap is
    ERPOne per acquired entity, none of them the sameNo single view of cost, inventory, or margin across the umbrella
    CRM and revenue systemsCompeting systems of record with overlapping accountsCross-portfolio cross-sell can't be evidenced, let alone worked
    Data integrationPoint-to-point connections inherited from each entityNo map of native versus custom API versus not connectable
    ReportingPer-entity BI with per-entity metric definitionsBoard reporting requires manual reconciliation every cycle
    Contracts and renewalsPre-close agreements with escalations nobody diariedRenewals pass their notice window during integration

    Pricing and features change constantly—always confirm current details on the vendor's own site before you buy.

    The first 90 days, with named deliverables

    1. 1

      Week 1—Discovery

      • Combined inventory of systems, contracts, and run-rate across entities
      • Where the data lives, who owns it, and what state it's in
      • The bottleneck that's actually blocking the value-creation plan
    2. 2

      Week 2—Map & Scope

      • Architecture map across the combined stack with overlap identified
      • Feasibility blueprint with the ROI case shown before any build starts
      • Consolidation sequence ordered by savings against disruption
    3. 3

      Week 3—Build Sprint

      • First consolidation and integration work executed against the approved plan
      • Clean definition layer stood up for the metrics the board reads
    4. 4

      Week 4—Train & Iterate

      • Handover to the portfolio operating team
      • Measured run-rate change tied to named contracts
      • The playbook, reusable on the next add-on acquisition

    Teams we've done this with

    Questions operators ask us

    How do you build a GTM strategy for a private equity portfolio company?

    Baseline before strategy. Establish what the combined stack costs, where the data is trustworthy, and which revenue motions the systems can actually support—then design the go-to-market against that reality. Strategy written before the data audit gets rewritten after it.

    How can a fractional GTM operating partner accelerate revenue growth post-acquisition?

    By compressing discovery. The expensive part of the first 100 days is the time spent finding out how the acquired business really runs. An operator who has done stack audits, ERP consolidation, and data architecture arrives with the sequence already known and hands the playbook to your team rather than staying on the payroll.

    How do you conduct a RevOps tech stack audit for a new portfolio company?

    Inventory every system and contract with renewal and notice dates, map capability overlap across entities, measure data quality against the fields the business actually routes and reports on, and price the combined run-rate. That's the artifact everything else is sequenced from.

    How do you integrate conflicting tech stacks and data after a merger?

    Pick the surviving system of record per capability first—most integrations stall because that decision gets deferred. Then map each connection as native, custom API, or not connectable, migrate the highest-value data first, and keep the retiring system read-only through at least one reporting cycle.

    Which CRM and marketing automation tools scale best for B2B portfolio companies?

    The one you can standardize on across entities matters more than the specific vendor. Standardization is what unlocks portfolio-level reporting and cross-sell; a marginally better platform in one portco is worth less than a common definition layer across all of them.

    How can optimizing the marketing and sales tech stack reduce customer churn?

    Churn usually shows up in the data before it shows up in the revenue—support volume, usage decline, unworked renewals. Consolidated data makes those signals visible in one place instead of three, early enough to act on.

    What is the ROI of hiring an external GTM consultant for a portco?

    It should be provable before the build starts, which is how we structure it: the blueprint phase maps the data and demonstrates the return, and if it doesn't clearly show a 10x improvement without disrupting the culture, you get your deposit back. No lock-in on a thesis that didn't hold up.

    Can you prove quantified ROI inside a 100-day window?

    That's the honest objection, and the answer is to prove it on paper first. The feasibility audit and blueprint phase comes before any build—architecture mapped, savings traced to named contracts, ROI shown. You approve the plan or you get the deposit back. What we won't do is publish a payout multiple as a promise; the structure is what's guaranteed, not the number.

    Want to build this in-house first?