First 30 Days: Stranded Cost Assessment

A practical sequence for standing up a credible stranded-cost view fast, before deal fatigue sets in.

Pull the shared-services org chart and flag every role with less than 100% allocation to the divested unit
Request the top 15 vendor contracts by spend and review assignment / change-of-control / minimum-commitment clauses
Get a preliminary ERP/IT separation scope from the CIO's office, even if a vendor SOW isn't final
Build the cost driver table with low/base/high ranges and an explicit confidence level per category — resist the urge to collapse ranges into a single number this early
Log every open item as an explicit data gap rather than a silent assumption, with an owner assigned

Tip: Speed matters more than precision in the first 30 days. A credible range with visible data gaps beats a false-precision point estimate that has to be walked back later — and it's much easier to defend to a buyer's diligence team.

Stranded Costs

Fixed costs that don't shrink when a business is divested — the single biggest driver of the gap between headline price and true proceeds.

Confidence Levels & Data Gaps

Why every number in DiligenceDesk carries a Low/Medium/High badge instead of pretending to be precise — and how to read one.

HR / People

Shared HR, payroll, and benefits infrastructure rarely shrinks in step with headcount — and partial-FTE roles are the hardest to cleanly split.