Operationalizing a business diligence missed.
Integration led at Workday. Acquired company anonymized; metrics rounded.
Weeks after close, integration work surfaced a business nobody had scoped: the acquired company's clients were running paid service offers on its software. It never came up in due diligence. No billing path, no support model, no playbook — and revenue already flowing through it.
Diligence models the business you're buying. It rarely models the businesses your target quietly enabled. When one surfaces post-close, someone has to give it structure fast — or it leaks revenue, goodwill, and the trust of the customers running on it.
This is thesis drift in its most literal form: the deal you closed turns out to be bigger than the deal you scoped.
- 01
Mapped the unscoped model onto an existing Workday service partner program (inclusive of billing, account hierarchy, onboarding, and production support) instead of inventing a structure from scratch.
- 02
Wrote a standalone operations guide with a section for each team, and aligned roles across customer support, deal ops, finance, partner legal, and partner services programs design.
- 03
Secured a CX resourcing commitment, because the guide made the cost of not staffing it visible.
If you're acquiring a B2B SaaS company, assume something material didn't make it into the data room. The question isn't whether you'll find it — it's whether anyone owns it when you do. A short integration diagnostic before close is the cheapest way to find out.