Industry: Finance

Business Need: Our client, an offshore organisation preparing for an Australian acquisition, needed expertise in the local financial services domain and in a variety of technologies including IBM mainframe and J2EE, to evaluate systems as part of a pre-acquisition due diligence study.

Plutonic Zoo solution:Within days of being contacted by our client, Plutonic Zoo had assembled a team of independent experts out of our Zoo in the key domain and technology areas. Each team member was tasked to review specific aspects of the prospect’s business and technical systems capabilities. Our Engagement Management model ensured centralised coordination of all efforts.

The team was given access to a vast array of documents in the Data Room and assessed the relevance of the materials, selecting 40+ documents for detailed analysis.

As is invariably the case the intelligence held within these documents only emerged after exhaustive study, correlation and tracing sequences and correspondences.

Simultaneously, specific external industry and market aspects required to be assessed by our client were examined and a series of relevant facts assembled.

The understanding gained at this point allowed a comprehensive assessment of strategic options considered by the target and a detailed commentary and evaluation of the costs and timing going forward to be borne by our client.

These preliminary studies identified a number of interim conclusions, assumptions and key uncertainties that were addressed to the CIO of the target and were resolved under cross-examination. Follow up meetings with the target’s technical architecture and development staff were held to validate and probe specific concerns with system design, maintenance activity and resource consumption.

The final report assessed the business and technical risks, identified the operational quality issues relating to the IT environment to be addressed, outlined the competitive positioning of the target in its market sector, and compared its IT supply contracts against comparative market offerings.

Business Benefits: Plutonic Zoo applied its impartiality in technology and people, its resourcefulness across subject matter experts to complement the client, its perceptiveness to assess exactly what the facts were, and its Engagement Management model to bring all pieces of the puzzle together. The client gained access to insight and understanding of the local market, competitive positioning and technical systems characteristics that would have been difficult to accomplish any other way in the timeframe available. The engagement was conducted at high intensity and facilitated an informed and confident client decision within the due diligence period.