Initial Review

Using our Blue Diamond Online system, clients are invited to complete our Fact Finder. This document provides us with a detailed overview of your business in advance of our workshop meeting. In providing us with details of your business in areas such as corporate structure, revenue, financial performance, funding, suppliers and organisational structure, we ensure that the Workshop meeting is effective as it can be. Register here using your code FH716.

At the initial meeting Bluebox, having reviewed your completed Fact Finder, will talk through some indicative objectives. We will also outline some areas of your business we believe may require addressing in advance of an exercise, and give an indication of the likely value of your business. Furthermore, we will review the Exit Scorecard to assess your readiness for exit.

Our Exit Scorecard has been designed to allow our clients to self-evaluate their readiness for sale. We ask that you rate your business in 20 key areas, which in aggregate produce a score indicating how ready your business is for exit. We then monitor, and re-evaluate your progress on an ongoing basis throughout the programme.

Guided Work Streams

Setting clear and measurable objectives is the critical first step in the Blue Diamond process. Using our toolkits, we will discuss various objectives relating to the sale of your business, both quantitative and qualitative, personal and general. It is against these objectives that we will monitor our progress going forward.

The workshop is a half-day session (sometimes structured as a series of shorter meetings), which provides us with an opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of your business. It is a highly structured session at which we set objectives, review scorecards, agree sector updates, review the business in significant detail, agree our KPI Quick Sheet and schedule our meetings going forward.

DiagnostiX is an intelligent, cloud based software that Bluebox uses to help identify key areas in your business that may require attention in advance of an exercise. It helps us to ensure that your business is fully prepared for sale, using a range of 22 detailed diligence reviews to 'flag' potential issues. The system simultaneously prepares a list of documents that will need to be uploaded to the data room.

Central to everything we do is the up-front purchaser analysis we conduct. Using a number of our tools, and in a separate session, we will work through the various likely groups of purchasers. We then present a purchaser scoping document which outlines the agreed groups and likely rationales for each.

Key to maximising value is identifying the various routes to growth that business has, then presenting these in a coherent opportunity map. We assess the merits of each in the context, of adding capital value, ease of implementation and whether it will widen the universe of purchasers. Thereafter, we seek to monitor progress against these opportunities to demonstrate 'runs on the board'.

As part of our Workshop, Bluebox will work with you to agree an ‘Exit KPI Quick Sheet’. This sheet will be used by your Bluebox team to monitor the performance of the business on an ongoing basis.

Deliverables

Bluebox will undertake a robust analysis of your business, the market in which you operate, and the precedent transactions within it, to produce an indicative valuation. This will give further consideration to the levers of value within your business, and how through good process arrangement, this valuation could be enhanced throughout the programme.

Bluebox will present a series of recommendations, with a focus on enhancing both the capital value of the business, and ensure it is ready for sale when the time comes. These recommendations are categorised into Pillars, Bricks and Mortar - decreasing in importance respectively. We then assign responsibilities for each recommendation and monitor progress over time.

A graphical illustration of the entire Blue Diamond process, the Roadmap shows a clear route from where the business is today, through the Blue Diamond process, to a targeted date for completion of the programme and exit thereafter. Key work streams are laid out, along with review meetings, key deliverables and Fit4Sale clinics.

As part of our programme, all clients are invited to their proprietary online data room. This is a virtual space where, in due course, we can disclose confidential information in a controlled manner to a number of interested parties. Ensuring that this facility is fully populated well in advance of a sale is critical and avoids an unnecessary rush once an interested party is identified.

Bluebox, working alongside a number of the leading professional service firms and private equity operators in the UK, has created a range of over 30 Fit4Sale clinics that are focused on key issues business owners need to address in advance of a sale. These clinics are delivered on a one to one basis and typically last 90 minutes. Clients are provided with access to up to ten Fit4Sale clinics as part of 'Blue Diamond'.

As an optional extra, Bluebox produces robust financial models for numerous clients. A financial model can be used for a number of applications: to aid in the ongoing running of the business; to crystallise growth opportunities into robust forecasts; to aid in the valuation process and; to test the sensitivity of the model to various inputs and scenarios.

Following on from the purchaser scoping exercise, Bluebox produces a detailed report on potential purchasers. Using the purchaser universe created during the scoping, we will identify indicative companies in the respective purchaser groups, describe the rationale behind their inclusion and detail their funding capacity.

Ongoing Monitoring

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