One of our private equity partners had started the due diligence process of an producer of adhesives that supplied its products all over the world. While they were fully on top of the financial analysis they asked us to perform a commercial due diligence. The goal was to identify the risk in the business plan that was presented for the next 3 years.

At first we started to take a close look at the historic sales data to see how the business had evolved so far. This way we got a good view on the key customers, with their churn & growth. Also we looked at the numerous product groups to see how they evolved. This top down analysis soon identified a number of key customers that should realize the predicted growth.

The numbers do not tell the whole story so in close cooperation with the manufacturer we designed a customer survey to ask feedback on the products, relationship and market forecasts. Within 2 weeks we did 30 surveys. The results were very insightful for the manufacturer and crucial input to determine where the risks and opportunities lied on the customer level. All insights were captured in a short report that was discussed with all parties.