Growth Strategy Consulting (Due Diligences)
The term “due diligence” used to really confuse me. Would you ever hand over some final deliverable to a client without having done your due diligence? Turns out, “due diligence” (“DD” for short) refers to a specific type of project - an intense, grueling type of project focused on preparing a fairly predictably formatted final document to be used as part of a company’s acquisition efforts (whether buying or selling).
You can always clue in on DD projects by asking someone what the average duration of their projects are. Most DDs are done in 2-3 weeks. If you’re thinking, wow, that’s pretty fast - you’re right! On paper, this could seem like a great thing: you’re always switching projects, learning about new industries, getting lots of exposure. Heck, you could have more than 20 projects in a year!
In real time, the pace of such a project would break down like this: you have a 3-week engagement, with two check-in presentations before the final presentation. That means you have 3.5 days each week to pull together what you’re showing the client, because your manager needs to review it and you need to budget a day to make adjustments and changes before the 5th day when it’s put in front of the client for their feedback. At best, for a 3-week project, you’ll have 10 real working days to understand a new industry inside-out, create a 5- or 10-year forecast on where that industry is going to go, have interviewed over a dozen industry insiders so you have quotes about the specific company you’re engaged to create an “independent market assessment” of, and perhaps even research expansion opportunities for the company in question.
The last DD I was on, I got staffed on a Sunday night, walked in Monday morning to realize the contract hadn’t even been inked and fully negotiated. One of my team members was on exchange from Japan, and had just landed in the US. They didn’t even have a badge to go to the bathroom without being locked out. We started working on this project despite not knowing the full scope of what we needed to look into; the SOW was finalized on Thursday, with our first client presentation being the day after. Unsurprisingly, working until midnight was just the start of “long hours” on this project.
Some people really like DDs. They’re predictable, in a way, because the deliverable is fairly formulaic. Every “independent market assessment” follows more or less the same pattern: you give a high-level introduction of the company in question, an outlook of the industry it’s in, review the key players and how the company in question ranks against the main competitors…
Some consulting firms will do much more in-depth evaluations, going over a target company’s internal financials with a fine-tooth comb and the like. DDs are very in demand because there’s a lot of private equity activity these days, and each sale triggers multiple DD engagements: the buyer wants to evaluate the opportunity, and the seller wants to put together an attractive package to attract buyers. Whether it’s homegrown mergers and acquisitions or private equity investments, multiple third parties are brought in to perform their due diligence to give the decision-makers a sense of security that they’re making an informed decision. Regardless of how deep the investigation goes, life on a DD project involves very few hours of sleep, barely anything else, and a whole lot of stress under time pressure.
Keywords for this type of acquired taste due diligence work:
Fast-paced environment
Qualitative and quantitative research
Market-sizing
Forecasting growth
Competitive analysis
Market research
Industry benchmarking
What’s in a day?
Travel is rare when you’re doing due diligences, because you’re mostly doing independent research, so there is no need for you to be on-site at the client’s. You may travel to evaluate the target company, but you’re more likely expected to (and should be able to as well) complete the bulk of your evaluations without ever having seen the physical building the target company occupies.
Early starts and late ends. Maybe even weekend work. Whatever your level, expect that you’ll be doing a lot of information-gathering during the day, and will sit down at your computer trying to synthesize all that information you’ve gathered onto presentation slides at night. (If you’re in some managerial capacity, that information-gathering could also be trying to troubleshoot issues and remove barriers for your team so they can do the qualitative or quantitative research you need them to be doing!)
To get more specific, that “information-gathering” or market research would involve:
Secondary market research - going through databases, lots of Google searches, etc.
Searching for and scheduling calls with credible people in the client’s industry to interview, either for context on the industry, or for external perspectives on the client (these folks may be called KOLs, short for Key Opinion Leaders, or SMEs, short for Subject Matter Experts)
Talking to the KOLs/SMEs that have agreed to talk to you, furiously taking notes (essentially transcribing) the whole time
Building and refining some sort of forecast model in Excel