For private equity
Portfolio margin, unlocked.
The margin already sitting inside your portfolio: what it's worth at exit, and how we help you find and test it.
The problem
Margin you already own, but just haven't captured yet.
40–70%
of the cost base is third-party spend
COGS plus indirect — most of it never properly negotiated.
Source: Accenture
11–12×
every $1M of savings, at exit
Savings drop straight to EBITDA. $1M/yr ≈ $11–12M of enterprise value at current multiples.
Source: PitchBook · McKinsey
~50%
of projected savings never reach the P&L
Finding savings isn’t the hard part. Keeping them is.
Source: McKinsey
You already optimize revenue, leverage, and the multiple. The spend line stays under-owned — too small for the big consultancies, too much execution for one operating partner. And waiting is expensive: opportunities identified in diligence or the first 100 days are 70% more likely to be captured.
Published benchmarks: Accenture, McKinsey, Efficio, PitchBook, Bain.
The solution
Strategy without execution is a shelf report. We do both.
The portfolio's procurement function — the Fortune-100 playbook at mid-market speed and cost. The diagnostic finds the initiatives. The tactical service executes them to PO. The cycle repeats: diagnose → implement → measure ↻
vs. consultancies
They advise and leave. We execute to PO — then stay.
vs. GPOs
Catalog rebates only. We source custom, beyond the catalog.
vs. an in-house hire
The right hire doesn’t exist at this size — and leaves in 2–3 years anyway. The service stays.
You don't buy software or hire a team. You buy the outcome: captured margin.
When to use it
One capability, three moments to use it.
01 · Diligence
Pre-close · deal team
Quantify the upside
Size the margin thesis before you sign.
02 · Value creation
The hold · operating partner
Capture the margin
Sourcing and negotiation, run to PO — company by company.
03 · Exit prep
Pre-sale · GP + bankers
Lock it in & package it
Make the run-rate defensible. Hand the buyer a margin story.
Owner ∩ portfolio
See what no single portfolio company can.
Across 5–10 portfolio companies, the diagnostic surfaces what no individual company sees: the same part bought at two prices, shared vendors ripe for volume aggregation, single-source risks, and best practices worth transferring — each one presented in operating-margin language.
1 week
From AP + GL exports to a prioritized opportunity map
Cross-portfolio
Shared vendors, aggregated volume, best-practice transfer
Operating margin
Every opportunity in your language — not procurement jargon
Fraction of the cost
Fortune 100-caliber diagnostic, sized for the mid-market
The engine
AI-native technology does the pattern work — classification, benchmarking, leakage detection. Experienced operators make every judgment call: what to negotiate, with whom, how hard. Hard-ROI AI across the portfolio, with zero deployment and humans in the loop on every decision — and a credible answer when LPs ask about AI.
The smallest useful next step
The Portfolio Spend Scan.
Pick one or two portfolio companies. Their teams pull AP + GL exports — about a day of work. We come back in 1 week with a prioritized opportunity map: where the margin is, what each initiative is worth, and how we'd capture it.
Scoped to company size and complexity · diagnostics from $20k · follow-on initiatives from $10k · no ongoing commitment.
Prefer to talk it through first? Bring one portfolio company's situation and we'll walk through what we'd look for — and what it's probably worth.
Book a Discovery CallReady to stop worrying about procurement?
Book a 30-minute discovery call. We'll show you exactly how it works for your business.
No commitment. No software demo. Just a conversation.