[01] Methodology
Phase 0 to Phase 3, in sixty days.
Codified, repeatable, operator-first.
The methodology is the contract between the sponsor and the integration. It compresses the post-acquisition window from one hundred eighty days to sixty. Five workstreams run in parallel. Six KPIs measure progress. One forty-five minute weekly meeting drives every decision. The same play runs at every acquisition in the fund, so the second integration is faster than the first.
The four phases
Four phases. One scorecard. No surprises.
P0 · Pre-close
Confirm Day 0 readiness. Pre-stage agents and tenant. Sign the integration blueprint.
P1 · Day 1 to 30
Hold the work. Tell the team. Activate dashboards. Quick wins on the board by Day 30.
P2 · Day 30 to 60
Synergy capture. Workflow scaling. Day 60 acquisition scorecard signed.
P3 · Day 60 onward
Steady state. Standard operating cadence. Roll the team to the next acquisition.
P0 — Pre-close
OpCadence integrates the acquired company stack in clean-room mode. Financials, payroll, customer book, and vendor list ingest into a tenant-isolated warehouse with zero outbound calls. The integration blueprint, KPI baselines, Day 1 communication plan, and risk register are signed before close.
Exit gate:Pre-close checklist signed by the sponsor and the OpCadence Integration Lead.
P1 — Day 1 to 30
Hold the work. Day 1 communications dispatch in a controlled window: top customers before the press release, employees before the customers, vendors before the partners. Sponsor and management dashboards go live within forty-eight hours of close. Finance and reporting agents enter shadow mode by Day 7 and supervised mode by Day 21. Two visible quick wins delivered by Day 30.
Exit gate:Day 30 scorecard with workstream-level status and the value creation plan refreshed against post-close information.
P2 — Day 30 to 60
First wave synergies recognized in financial statements by Day 60. Procurement, overhead, and vendor consolidation are the typical first-wave categories. Agents move from supervised to monitored. Back-office headcount of the acquired company is replanned around the agents. Operational KPIs at or above pre-close baseline. Voluntary attrition below the integration threshold.
Exit gate:Day 60 acquisition scorecard signed by sponsor and CEO.
P3 — Day 60 onward
Steady state. Standard operating cadence. Sponsor dashboard remains live. Reporting agents publish the weekly scorecard automatically. The configured OpCadence tenant becomes the template for the next acquisition.
The five workstreams
Five tracks. Run in parallel.
Workstream / 01
Operations
Hold customer-facing service from Day 0. Standardize the operating stack. Convert the acquired customer book to recurring contracts where the model supports it.
Workstream / 02
Finance
Migrate the books. Stand up combined reporting on the standard chart of accounts by Day 60. Synergy capture posted to the value creation plan as it lands.
Workstream / 03
Sales
Protect the customer book. Activate cross-sell where the platform earns the right to. Top accounts contacted by name within seventy-two hours of close.
Workstream / 04
Human Capital
Retain the people. Communicate before the rumor. Replan back-office headcount around the agents, not against them.
Workstream / 05
Technology
Connect the stack. Make the data warehouse honest. Migrate to the OpCadence dispatch and reporting layer by Day 30.
Governance
Three roles. One meeting. Zero binders.
Three roles.
Steering Committee (sponsor and CEO). OpCadence Integration Lead (one per acquisition). Workstream Owners (five per acquisition).
One meeting.
Weekly cadence, forty-five minutes, scorecard-led. Friday 9am tenant local time. Status read in the dashboard before the meeting, not delivered in the meeting.
Zero binders.
Every decision is logged with rationale. Every blocker auto-escalates to the next tier at the seventy-two hour mark. Reversible decisions are made fast. Irreversible decisions get the meeting.
The six metrics
The scorecard is the contract.
Metric
Owner
Value
Status
Synergy capture
Integration Lead
$3.4M
Integration cost
CFO
72 bps
Key account retention
CRO
98.2%
Voluntary attrition
CHRO
6.4%
Milestone delivery
PMO
27 / 30
Operating EBITDA
CEO
$11.8M
The OpCadence scorecard is the same six metrics at every acquisition: synergy capture against plan, integration cost against budget, key account retention, voluntary attrition, milestone delivery on time, and operating EBITDA run rate. Sponsors see the same numbers across the portfolio. Management teams see the same numbers across the integration. Frontline owners see the numbers that map to their workstream.
Run your next acquisition on OpCadence.
Sixty-day pilots are open for the second half of 2026. Two design partner slots remain. Fixed fee. Defined Day 60 scorecard. Reference rights in exchange for the discount.