Could your data survive due diligence?
Take the three-minute Data Room Stress Test to identify the evidence gaps a buyer is most likely to question.
Due diligence request
A prospective buyer wants your evidence by Friday.
FromProspective buyer
DeadlineFriday
Please provide:
- Financial performance, cash and margin
- Revenue quality, retention and customer concentration
- Forecast accuracy and underlying demand
- Operational performance and customer outcomes
- Evidence of value-creation impact
- Consistent measures across core systems
Could your team respond without rebuilding the numbers?
Answer six questions to see where a buyer may challenge the evidence and what to fix first.
About three minutes. No confidential information is requested or stored.
Question 1 of 6
Financial reporting
0/ 100
YOUR RESULT
Your result
YOUR RESULT AT A GLANCE
Where to focus before a buyer asks
Strongest area
HOW FINATAL’S DATA PRACTICE CAN HELP
Close the gaps before due diligence begins
Your result highlights where inconsistent, inaccessible or poorly owned data could lead to more buyer questions and reduce confidence in business performance.
Mark Leader works within Finatal’s Data practice. Where leadership is part of the answer, he helps PE-backed businesses define the mandate and hire the right interim or permanent data leader to fix the gaps.
Mark Leader | Associate Director, AI Leadership, Data and Analytics
This diagnostic provides general guidance and does not replace formal diligence, legal or investment advice.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Data debt becomes exit debt when the value story cannot be proved.
A portfolio company may have created significant value. But if management cannot show what drove that value, how sustainable it is and where future growth will come from, buyers have less reason to trust the equity story.
Data debt is the accumulation of disconnected systems, inconsistent definitions, manual reporting and unclear ownership that makes reliable information difficult to produce.
THE COMMERCIAL CHAIN
- 01 Fragmented data
- 02 Unclear performance
- 03 Greater buyer scrutiny
- 04 Less confidence in the equity story
THE BUYER EVIDENCE CHECKLIST
Fifteen questions your data should answer before exit
If several answers require a new spreadsheet, a manual reconciliation or one person’s institutional knowledge, the evidence base may need attention.
Can every key metric be traced to its source?
Do Finance and Sales report the same revenue?
Are revenue and retention definitions consistent?
Can you explain customer concentration by segment?
Can you show profitability by customer?
Can pipeline data support the revenue forecast?
Is forecast accuracy measured over time?
Can operational performance be connected to retention?
Can customer outcomes be connected to growth?
Can margin improvement be linked to specific actions?
Can value-creation initiatives be evidenced in EBITDA?
Can acquired businesses report consistently?
Does every critical measure have an owner?
Can management answer follow-up questions quickly?
Can core data be combined without a major rebuild?