Overview
A private equity-backed acquirer came to OpsAssist after a rough landing. In a prior acquisition, the technical due diligence hadn't gone deep enough into the target's internally built technology. The deal closed, and only afterward did the buyer discover the full picture: a substantial backlog of scalability, resiliency, and compliance issues baked into the core product. OpsAssist was brought in post-close to stabilize and remediate the acquired platform. It was necessary work, but the kind of work that's far cheaper to plan for before a deal closes than to react to after.
When the same client began evaluating its next acquisition target, they didn't want a repeat. This time, they engaged OpsAssist up front to run technical due diligence before signing, so they'd know exactly what they were buying.
(Client details have been withheld at their request.)
Challenges
- A Costly Precedent: The client had already lived through the consequences of incomplete diligence: unplanned remediation work, delayed roadmap commitments, and eroded confidence in the deal's return profile.
- Opaque Target Technology: The new target's platform was internally built, with limited documentation and no outside eyes on the architecture, infrastructure, or engineering practices behind it.
- Tight Deal Timeline: Diligence needed to be thorough enough to surface real risk, but fast enough to fit inside the deal's negotiation window.
- Translating Technical Risk into Deal Terms: Findings needed to be actionable for a non-technical deal team, informing valuation, negotiation, and Day 1 integration planning, not just sitting in an engineering report.
Solutions Implemented
- Comprehensive Technical Due Diligence
Conducted a structured review of the target's codebase, architecture, infrastructure, and engineering practices, evaluating scalability, resiliency, security, and compliance posture against the standards the acquirer would need post-close.
- Clear-Eyed Findings Report
Delivered a detailed report that laid out what was working well and what wasn't, including specific technical debt, architectural risks, and gaps in compliance readiness, organized so both technical and deal-side stakeholders could act on it.
- Integration-Ready Recommendations
Went beyond a pass/fail assessment to outline what it would take to bring the target's technology up to the acquirer's standards, giving the deal team a realistic view of post-close effort and cost before the deal closed.
Conclusion
Armed with a full and accurate picture of the target's technology, the client moved forward with confidence, and the integration that followed went far more smoothly than the previous acquisition had. Issues that would once have surfaced as unpleasant surprises months into ownership were instead known, planned for, and priced in before the deal ever closed. What started as a lesson learned the hard way became a repeatable part of the client's acquisition playbook.
