Year 1–2
Stability focus
Leadership optimises for EBITDA. Technology gets stability budgets.
The platform works today. Customisations accumulate. Dependencies form quietly. No one is asked the exit question yet.
We eliminate the technology risks that erode exit valuations — single-person dependencies, fragile integrations, unclear scalability, weak governance — and assemble the evidence buyers actually scrutinise. Done early, when fixes are cheap.
By the time buyer due diligence raises the platform questions, fixing them looks like panic. Better to find them early — when fixes are systematic, cheap, and invisible to the next buyer's DD team.
The platform works today. Customisations accumulate. Dependencies form quietly. No one is asked the exit question yet.
It is ready, for current operations. But scalability evidence, governance documentation, and dependency elimination aren't there. No one notices yet.
Single-person dependencies. Undocumented integrations. Aged policies. Recent platform changes that read as "panic" in DD. Valuation discount triggered.
Scoped to the calendar before exit, not the calendar of management theatre. Every engagement produces tangible artefacts a buyer's DD team will accept as evidence.
2–4 weeks · Fixed fee
A structured review of the technology estate — systems, integrations, suppliers, governance, security, and people. Establishes a baseline, surfaces risk, and creates the foundation for everything that follows.
3–5 days · Fixed fee
A focused review scored against the questions buyers actually ask in technology due diligence. Outputs a prioritised remediation plan with the items that will trigger valuation discounts if left untouched.
3–6 weeks · Fixed fee
The Value Creation Plan defines the destination — this turns its technology pillars into an executable delivery roadmap. Sequenced, resourced, and aligned to the exit horizon so technology becomes a value lever, not a footnote.
12 weeks – 12 months · Outside IR35
Hands-on Technical and Transformation leadership — closing knowledge SPOFs, refreshing the policy stack, restructuring suppliers, and building the evidence pack DD needs. Light-touch governance, sprint-led delivery.
4–6 weeks · Fixed fee
The integrated artefact buyers expect: refreshed policies, architecture documentation, supplier register, risk register, AI position. Built once, ready to share when the question comes.
Most engagements start at twelve weeks and often extend into a reduced-day retainer. The shape is consistent: find the risk, close it, then embed the way of working that survives the engagement.
Read every supplier contract, every policy, every system dependency. Identify the single-points-of-failure. Surface the contract terms nobody's looked at since signature. Write the risks down — concrete and named.
Refresh the policy stack. Resolve the knowledge SPOFs. Stand up light-touch governance the team can actually run. Build a live sprint backlog that becomes the leadership team's working tool — not a steering deck artefact.
Architecture clarity, supplier renegotiation, AI position, integration sequencing. The leadership team has the rhythm; the engagement tapers into maintenance or a reduced-day retainer. The team is stronger than when the engagement started.
Selected current and recent engagements. Named with permission; others are anonymised. Full case studies available on request.
A 14-week interim engagement at a PE-backed UK/US coaching and leadership development business. The mandate: resolve the Salesforce single-point-of-failure ahead of a key person departure, refresh the policy stack, reset supplier governance, articulate the system architecture model, and build the evidence base for exit readiness.
Group IT Programme Manager during a PE-backed post-merger period. Established integration governance, gathered requirements across Dynamics, SAP, Salesforce and EDI, created the VCP and TSA for handover, and launched contact-centre support for 1,000+ field-based operatives.
Programme Release Lead for the ACTPM implementation across UK, DACH and Eastern Europe. End-to-end ownership from process design and GAP analysis through DevOps Agile build, data migration, UAT and BAU transition. Included carve-outs (Elida, Tea Co) and claims contact centre automation.
A sample of deliverables produced during the current PE-backed engagement. Each is a working tool the business uses, refreshed iteratively, owned by named stakeholders. Buyer DD teams expect to see this material exists.
Master security policy refreshed and republished as v6.0. Used as the structural template for the broader policy stack.
Defensible AI position pre-empting the DD question, with approved tools, acceptable-use guidance, and review cadence.
Visual working document — categorised, T-shirt sized, with originators and parallel-track drill-down. The programme's daily tool.
Visual map of the technology estate — system of record, system of engagement, supporting platforms — with transition paths.
Structured review of a key supplier contract with three termination scenarios, commercial impact, and a recommended path.
Twelve-module security awareness programme — interactive HTML modules on a monthly cadence, designed end-to-end and built in-house.
This isn't management consulting. It's experienced delivery, brought in to close real risks in a real timeframe. Five principles shape every engagement.
Every engagement starts by naming the specific risks that will trigger a DD discount. Generic transformation language doesn't help — buyers ask precise questions, and you need precise answers.
A 50-page wiki doesn't close a single-person dependency. Tested, transferred capability does. We validate handovers by having the new owner do the actual work — not by reviewing the document.
Light-touch is the bias: four-step delivery process, three-tier governance, sprint backlog as the working artefact. Programme Directors spend ~25% of time on governance, not 50%.
The aim is always to put the in-house team in a better position to run the function themselves. Reduced reliance on outside support, not increased dependency. The DD evidence pack is assembled as you go — every quick win becomes a documented outcome.
Buyers are starting to ask about AI in DD. The right answer is two or three pragmatic, commercial wins — not a 47-slide roadmap. We help portcos publish defensible AI positions and ship small, measurable automation.
The Clarity Partnership is led by James Scott. The work combines nearly thirty years of transformation, integration and PE-backed delivery experience with a specific specialisation that's harder to find: lived experience of closing exit-blocking technology risks inside PE-backed environments.
Senior delivery roles at Unilever (ACTPM across 11 European markets), Gravity Media (£500m post-merger integration), Samsung, General Mills, and earlier-stage PE-backed ventures. The Clarity Partnership was founded specifically for the technology readiness gap that emerges between portco operating timelines and PE fund exit timelines — a gap most portcos discover too late.
Engagements are run from the UK, delivered remotely or on-site, and structured outside IR35 via The Clarity Partnership.
The questions below come up in almost every discovery call. If yours isn't here, ask it directly by email.
Look for someone with lived experience of closing exit-blocking technology risks inside PE-backed environments, not a generalist consultant. The right person can identify single-person dependencies, fragile integrations, aged policies and supplier issues in the first two weeks, then close them systematically before buyer DD begins. The Clarity Partnership specialises in exactly this work: fractional or interim engagements for PE-backed UK and US businesses preparing for exit.
A focused DD readiness assessment takes three to five days. A broader technology audit covering the full estate — systems, integrations, suppliers, governance, security, and people — takes two to four weeks. Both produce a prioritised risk register and a remediation plan. Neither should take longer than that; if a consultant proposes twelve weeks just to assess, they're building a project, not closing risk.
Four principles: structured knowledge capture in defined sessions (not informal chats); progressive handover of real work to the incoming owner while the outgoing owner is still present; documentation validated by use — the new owner does actual work using only the documents; and a weekly risk register tracking the dependency until independent operation is proven. Capability transfer of this kind takes 8-12 weeks minimum. If exit is under six months away, you're already late.
A technology audit is a comprehensive review of the technology estate: systems, integrations, suppliers, governance, security, capability, and dependencies. It establishes a baseline. A DD readiness assessment is narrower and sharper — it scores the same estate specifically against the questions buyers ask in technology due diligence. Most engagements start with one or the other, depending on how close the exit is.
The VCP defines the destination; a roadmap sequences the journey. That means translating VCP technology pillars into named workstreams, dependencies mapped, resourcing assumptions surfaced, and a first-90-days quick-win backlog identified. The output is a document the portco leadership team and fund can both agree to — one that a buyer's DD team will accept as evidence that management understood the technology dimension of value creation. Typical duration: three to six weeks.
Yes. The Clarity Partnership operates outside IR35 through a proper substitution clause, business-owned tools and processes, and delivery-based (rather than time-based) engagement structuring. Contracts and working practices are aligned to HMRC's CEST criteria, and the arrangement is designed to survive scrutiny.
Day-rate engagements are structured based on scope and duration, typically 3-5 days per week initially, tapering to a reduced-day retainer after 12-16 weeks. Rate available on request; discovery calls are free. Fixed-fee assessments (technology audit, DD readiness, VCP-to-roadmap, DD evidence pack) are quoted upfront with defined outputs.
Yes — an interim AI usage policy typically takes two to three weeks to research, draft, review with leadership, and publish. It matters for exit because buyers are increasingly asking about it in DD. The absence of any documented AI position signals a management team that hasn't thought about where their industry is going. Two or three pragmatic AI wins plus a defensible policy is better than a 47-slide AI strategy that has never left the shared drive.
Supplier contracts that were signed 18-36 months ago and never reviewed since are a common DD friction point. Check three things: whether the operative schedules (KPIs, SLAs, deliverables) were ever formally agreed and signed; whether actual billing matches contracted base plus documented scope changes; and whether termination or renewal notice periods will constrain post-close flexibility. In a recent engagement, actual annualised spend on a critical IT supplier was approximately five times the contracted base — surfaced by proper review, corrected before it became a deal-noise item.
Twelve to eighteen months before exit is the pragmatic window. Earlier is better — capability transfer, policy refresh, supplier renegotiation, and architecture clarity all take months, not weeks. Most portcos discover technology risks at month 18 pre-exit when fixes are expensive, visible in DD as recent panic-work, and negotiated as valuation discounts. The Clarity Partnership specialises in identifying and eliminating these risks earlier — when fixes are cheap and invisible.
Request the DD readiness guide for a structured view of what buyers scrutinise. Or book a 30-minute call to discuss a specific situation in your portfolio.