Tech Due Diligence Support for an IT/Platform Business

The Challenge

The investment target had an established business foundation and customer touchpoints within its industry. However, for the investment decision, it was necessary to quickly assess whether the technology foundation could sustain competitiveness over the medium to long term, whether the planned growth investments were reasonable, and whether there were structural risks in the development and operations structure. Even in the absence of critical product defects, evaluating the potential for post-investment value creation and execution risk was a key issue.

Why Stella Maris

There was a need to assess aspects that financial and business analysis alone could not capture—such as the soundness of the technology foundation, sustainability of competitive advantage, appropriateness of development investment, and organizational and vendor risks—in a form directly usable for investment decisions. A tech due diligence was therefore conducted to evaluate product competitiveness, system architecture, development structure, investment plans, and AI adoption potential in a cross-functional manner, and to clarify investment decisions and post-investment priority themes.

Our Approach

For the target company's major product portfolio, the team conducted product evaluations including competitive benchmarking, confirmed technology foundation stability, mapped data integration structures and architecture, analyzed development organization and external partner dependencies, and validated the appropriateness of past IT investment levels and future investment plans. Beyond simply diagnosing the current state, the findings were structured to address which areas had competitive strengths, which had room for improvement, which investments were defensive versus offensive, and which themes should be prioritized post-acquisition—all in a form directly connected to management and investment decision-making.

Results

The evaluation confirmed that the target company did not have critical technical problems in its core foundation and possessed sufficient competitiveness to sustain its existing business. At the same time, key themes for post-investment value enhancement were identified: right-sizing of operational maintenance costs, resolution of vendor dependencies, redesigning development prioritization based on ROI, and strengthening execution management for large-scale projects. This not only provided the materials needed to decide whether to proceed with the investment, but also delivered concrete guidance on which areas to invest in further and where to strengthen the organization after acquisition.

Solutions Used