Management Consultancy · Service
Commercial due diligence
Whether the business will still be there in three years.
At a glance
What it is
“Financial diligence asks whether the numbers are true. Commercial diligence asks whether they will stay true.”
A principal, Kaelo Management Consultancy
What’s included
Four areas of scopeCustomer concentration and quality
Not just the top-ten share, but tenure, contract basis, switching cost and who owns the relationship. A concentrated book held on personal relationships that leave with a founder is a materially different asset from the same book on multi-year contracts.
Whether the position is defended
Market share is an outcome. The question is what protects it: switching cost, regulatory position, distribution, genuine cost advantage — or nothing, in which case the margin is borrowed.
The growth mechanism
Growth assumptions need a mechanism. More salespeople is a mechanism. A market growing at some published rate is not — it is an assumption that the business will hold share while growing, which is the thing being tested.
Operational deliverability
Whether the operation can actually serve the plan. This is where an operator's read differs most from a purely analytical one, and where plans most often fail after the deal.
How the work runs
Scope
The questions that would change the decision.
Evidence
Customer, market and operational, weighted by what is decision-relevant.
Written view
Including what we could not establish and what would change our answer.
When to come to us
- 01 You are acquiring and the financial diligence is already under way.
- 02 A growth plan needs testing before it is funded.
- 03 You want an operator's read alongside an analyst's.
What we do not do
- Financial or tax due diligence, valuation, or any opinion on price — all outside this licence.
- Legal due diligence.
- Recommending whether to transact. We provide the commercial view; the decision is yours.
Common questions
