By Thomas Thayyil Thomas, Co-Founder & CEO, Teragonia
When private equity investors acquire a new portfolio company, the clock starts ticking. Boards, lenders, and limited partners expect results quickly, and management teams feel the pressure to prove that value creation is real. Nowhere is this pressure more acute than in manufacturing and distribution businesses, where complexity multiplies across plants, suppliers, logistics networks, and customers.
The first 90 days after close are often the difference between momentum and drift. Executives who seize that execution window establish credibility, energize teams, and create a foundation for compounding improvements. Those who squander it face mounting skepticism and a shrinking set of options.
Post-close enthusiasm can be intoxicating. Consultants arrive with thick diligence decks. Every function generates lists of priorities. Operating partners ask for ambitious value creation plans. Before long, management teams are staring at dozens of initiatives—SKU rationalization, supplier renegotiations, network redesigns, ERP clean-ups, commercial effectiveness programs.
The instinct is to push everything forward at once, to demonstrate activity and prove responsiveness. But manufacturing and distribution organizations rarely have the capacity to absorb such a broad array of simultaneous disruptions. Spreading energy across too many fronts slows execution, exhausts teams, and erodes trust when promised results slip.
This is the first trap of the post-close period: mistaking motion for progress.
“Value Orchestration offers a more disciplined approach. It treats the first 90 days not as a frantic race, but as a carefully designed execution window—a short, defined period in which the organization aligns around a small number of high-impact moves that can be delivered with precision.”
Why 90 days? Because it is long enough to implement real change, yet short enough to maintain urgency and visibility. Quarterly cadence forces prioritization, sharpens sequencing, and provides a natural review point with boards and investors. It’s also the right amount of time to set up a data foundation for Value Orchestration and begin to appropriately instrument the business.
In this framework, success is not about how many initiatives appear on the slide. It is about whether the company can reliably translate a handful of signals into measurable results within the window. That discipline sets the tone for the rest of the hold period.
In practice, an effective execution window has three qualities:
This doesn’t mean ignoring the rest of the value creation plan. It means staging it. Improvements that are important but not urgent are deliberately sequenced into future windows, so teams can focus and deliver.
Consider a PE-backed industrial distributor that closed a platform deal with ambitious synergy targets. At close, management faced a laundry list: consolidate DCs, renegotiate contracts, rationalize SKUs, integrate IT systems, and improve pricing discipline. The temptation was to launch all of them simultaneously.
Instead, leadership applied an execution window mindset. In the first 90 days, they focused on three moves: reducing expedited freight costs, tightening pricing authority in underperforming regions, and stabilizing order-to-cash processes that were straining working capital.
Each initiative had an owner, clear thresholds for action, and a cross-functional team empowered to make decisions. Progress was reviewed weekly, not in abstract dashboards but in concrete financial terms.
By the end of the quarter, expedited freight costs had dropped 18 percent, working capital improved, and regional margin gaps began to close. Perhaps more importantly, the company proved to its board and employees that it could pick a target, act in unison, and deliver. That credibility made the next wave of initiatives easier to launch and fund.
When companies fail to respect the execution window, the consequences are real. Teams get bogged down in too many competing projects. Early wins are delayed, eroding confidence with boards and lenders. Instead of focusing on compounding improvements, leaders are forced into defensive explanations.
In manufacturing and distribution, time lost in the first 90 days is hard to recover. Seasonal cycles move on. Supplier contracts roll over. Integration momentum stalls. The value creation plan becomes reactive rather than orchestrated.
Closing deals and producing results are different disciplines. To maximize the first 90 days, executives can begin with a simple reset:
This process transforms the post-close scramble into a disciplined operating rhythm. It demonstrates that leadership is not just ambitious, but precise.
The point of the execution window is not just the first set of wins. It is about institutionalizing a cadence that can repeat throughout the hold period. Every quarter becomes another opportunity to identify, prioritize, and deliver.
Over time, the company develops muscle memory: teams know that initiatives are not endless lists but focused commitments; boards know they will see predictable results; and employees know that effort leads to visible outcomes.
That is how credibility compounds. And credibility, in private equity-backed manufacturing and distribution businesses, is currency.
“Ambition at close is never the problem. The problem is orchestration—turning that ambition into a sequence of actions that land reliably.”
The first 90 days are when expectations are highest and patience is shortest. Leaders who embrace the execution window prove they can move from insight to impact, not someday, but now.
That is the promise of Value Orchestration in the post-close period: to transform energy into results, motion into momentum, and ambitious plans into measurable value.
A proven business builder, innovator and M&A advisor with significant global experience, and adept in quantitative techniques and technology, Thomas brings forth a unique set of perspectives and capabilities to boost the systemic efficiency of fast-growing enterprises. Thomas has been a trusted advisor throughout his professional services career to several financial sponsors, sovereign wealth funds and Fortune 100 corporations, throughout the M&A life cycle from deal sourcing, deal execution, post-close value creation, to exit.
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BS International Business | American University of Paris
BS Computer Science | American University of Paris
Seasoned DevOps and infrastructure engineer with expertise in AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform; led cloud migrations and scalable infrastructure projects at Sfara, FanDuel, and Kickstarter.
With over 15 years of experience in small and medium-sized startups, Scott is a seasoned expert in designing, optimizing, and maintaining robust, scalable, and secure infrastructure. He specializes in automation and embedding security from the ground up, consistently delivering reliable systems tailored to meet dynamic business requirements.
Prior to joining Teragonia, Scott made a significant impact at Sfara, where he built the company’s entire infrastructure from scratch. He engineered systems capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of users with seamless scalability, implemented automated development pipelines, and introduced observability tools to monitor and manage resources effectively. Additionally, Scott led the infrastructure team in achieving ISO27001 security certification, ensuring security was integrated into every aspect of the system and transforming it into a critical asset for business-to-business operations.
Beyond his technical expertise, Scott has a proven track record of managing and mentoring high-performing teams. As a Senior DevOps Engineer at FanDuel, he gained invaluable experience in scaling infrastructure and optimizing resources to support millions of daily users, aligning technological capabilities with organizational goals.
Master’s in Human Resources | University of Illinois
Bachelor’s in Management | Loyola University
Former Financial and Operations Manager at Houlihan Lokey, Golin Harris, and MSL Group.
Jack is a highly driven, cross functional professional with extensive experience in operations and administration.
Prior to joining Teragonia, Jack held financial and facilities management roles for Houlihan Lokey, MSL Group/Publicis, and Golin Harris in which managed and created processes and trainings for multiple functional areas ensuring operational and administrative procedures were well planned, efficient, cost-effective, and aligned with business objectives while ensuring initiatives, internal events as well as client events propelled employee and client engagement.
Jack holds undergraduate degrees from University of Illinois and Loyola University Chicago and has completed graduate certificates in Business Administration, Strategic Human Resources, and Operations at Cornell, CUNY-Buffalo, and University of Illinois and is in the process of completing a Master’s in Human Resources at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business.
MS Analytics | Georgia Institute of Technology
BS Management Information Systems | Oklahoma State University
Former analytics engineer at Cyderes and ConocoPhillips with a Master’s in Analytics from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s in Management Information Systems from Oklahoma State University
Mason is an Analytics Engineer with deep experience in data analytics, business intelligence, machine learning, and cybersecurity. He brings a proven track record of leading analytics engagements spanning architecture, insights, visualizations, and delivery.
Before joining Teragonia, Mason was a Senior Analytics Engineer at Cybersecurity MSSP CYDERES where he built a scalable, standardized, and secure analytics architecture for over 300 clients across many industries and consulted with them to deliver insights through bespoke data driven solutions. In addition, he managed the data delivery of the insight platform leveraged by the Security Operations Center to respond to incidents in a timely and effective manner.
Prior to joining CYDERES, Mason worked in ConocoPhillips’ Analytics and Innovation Center of Excellence holding varied roles within the Data Analytics organization from Data Engineering, to Business Intelligence, and Data Science. He delivered robust data solutions in all operating units for various functions including Engineering and Production, Finance, IT, and more. Including projects to standardize cost and production data across operating units.
Mason started his career at The Williams Companies in cybersecurity and transitioned to cybersecurity at ConocoPhillips where he found his passion for Data Analytics through SIEM management, detection engineering, and threat intelligence.
Bachelor’s in Finance & Accounting | Georgetown University
Former analytics engineer at Houlihan Lokey and financial analytics at JP Morgan Chase with a Bachelor’s in Finance & Accounting at Georgetown University
Grace is a seasoned analytics engineer with specialized expertise in crafting and implementing analytics solutions that drive agile, informed executive decisions in M&A and value creation for private equity-backed companies.
Before joining Teragonia, Grace was a part of the data science and business analytics team at Houlihan Lokey. She has excelled in harmonizing, enriching, and analyzing data from diverse sources, providing key insights that enabled private equity investors and portfolio company executives to make rapid, data-driven decisions across the investment lifecycle. She has developed novel analytics solutions, including deal sourcing and evaluation tools for platform investments that employ a buy-and-build or de novo growth strategy, as well as post-close value creation and KPI reporting tools for operators and management teams.
Grace has also worked at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the Global Finance and Business Management rotational program, where she built analytics solutions to evaluate banker attrition and KPI reporting within the Global Private Bank.
