The Role of Vendor Assist in Value Creation when Selling a Business

The key to a successful sales process is telling the right story. At Quantify, we are seeing a real trend in the market for corporates engaging vendor assist in advance of a sales process.

Vendor assist isn’t just about making sure the numbers stack up (though it does help) but about genuinely creating and protecting value in a deal.  This is where the real value creation happens and where QAG can help with our Vendor Assist services.

Many businesses will have mountains of raw data, it may not all be on their financial system, it might be tucked away on spreadsheets or even sitting as detail on each invoice. Companies often have more operational data and metrics than they realise, however, the finance function are producing management accounts without always realising the need for metrics such as margin by project or asset utilisation.

A good vendor assist provider (preferably QAG, but other providers are available) will understand how a due diligence works and will know the kind of analysis and insights that will elevate the due diligence to the next level and knock the socks off a buyer’s investment committee.

We will work as part of your team, to use your data and information to ensure we have robust, diligence-able information that shows that allows for historical analysis and comparison and tells the story of the business through the numbers.

The best way to illustrate this is the graphic below. You can have mountains of raw data, but if it is sitting on various spreadsheets and not shared with a buyer, or is shared but in a format too messy to be useful, it isn’t telling the right story.

Here are a few reasons why this makes a sales process smoother, quicker and increases certainty of delivery.

• Vendor Assist gets involved with the business before the sale process starts – the earlier the better.
• It aims to prepare financial information to be used for a sales process, removing this burden from the management team. 
• As diligence providers, the first thing we often see is a glossy IM highlighting the many growth opportunities. But when diligence commences, the information is messy or incomplete. 
• This can dent the buyer’s confidence, delay the process and can ultimately impact the value. 
• As finance resource and management time becomes increasingly constrained, more and more businesses are opting to engage a Vendor Assist ahead of a sales process. This means that when an offer comes, the information is prepared and ready to be diligenced straight away. This frees up management time to focus on the running of the business and speeds up the sales process. 
• Vendor Assist also has the benefit of identifying issues early, so they can be fixed prior a process starting. This gives more certainty of completion and makes it very clear to a buyer where the value is generated. 
• Vendor Assist increases control around what is being presented, will present the trends, the growth and the story in a clear way that can then stand up to a rigorous due diligence process.

 When you decide to sell, value creation should be at the forefront of your mind, vendor assist to prepare the financials is just one of the ways you can improve your overall sales process, make the business more attractive to buyers and ultimately increase value.