Why value-creation plans die between the deal team and FP&A
Most value-creation plans are not wrong. They are orphaned. The model that justified the investment and the forecast the business actually reports on are two separate documents, maintained by two separate groups, and nobody is accountable for reconciling them. That gap is where the plan quietly dies.
The handoff that never happens
At close, the deal team hands over a thesis with a number attached to it. The finance organization, meanwhile, is running a budget built before the transaction, on a chart of accounts that does not break out any of the initiatives the thesis depends on. Six months later the sponsor asks how the plan is tracking and receives two answers, both defensible, neither reconciled.
The fix is unfashionable. It is not a dashboard. It is putting FP&A in the room while each initiative is quantified, so that the benefit, the owner, the baseline and the account it will land in are agreed before anyone reports progress.
Quantify initiative by initiative
Standing up the value-creation PMO at a $3B+ PE-backed staffing and workforce platform meant taking pricing, procurement, SG&A, shared services and IT one at a time rather than as a single program with a single number. That produced $26M+ in run-rate EBITDA within six months, including $16.1M of year-one cost reduction and $24M of OpEx savings.
A continuous improvement program across 19 initiatives at an $8B global commercial real estate services business worked the same way and produced $35M of run-rate EBITDA improvement with $12M captured in the first year, plus a 40-plus initiative pipeline built for the year after.
Read those two sentences carefully, because they contain the discipline the whole method rests on: run-rate and captured are different numbers, and stating them separately is what keeps a sponsor conversation honest. A plan that reports only run-rate is describing a future it has not yet reached.
One set of numbers, two audiences
The C-suite and the sponsor need different framing and the same arithmetic. When the PMO reports one set of numbers into both, the arguments move to what should be done next. When it reports two, the arguments stay stuck on whose figures are right, and the first casualty is the initiative that was hardest to quantify and often most valuable.
Getting there is largely mechanical. Every initiative is folded into the forecast rather than tracked beside it. Benefits are booked against a named account with a named owner. Reporting runs on the same calendar as the close, not on a separate PMO cycle. Standing up the Americas PMO across three merged entities at an $8B global commercial real estate services business unified 75+ projects and brought status-reporting lag down more than 40% on exactly that basis.
What to check in your own plan
Three questions usually settle whether a value-creation plan is real. Can someone name the account each benefit will land in. Does the current forecast contain the initiatives, or merely reference them. And can the business state, without preparation, how much of the plan is captured against how much is run-rate. If any of the three needs a week of work to answer, the plan is a document rather than a program.
Related: Value Creation & EBITDA engagements.
Further reading: Decision rights before systems: what Day 1 readiness actually requires and The first thirty days of an interim CFO engagement. Engagement records behind this article: value-creation PMO, staffing and workforce platform, continuous improvement program, commercial real estate services and Americas PMO, commercial real estate services.
By Chad Barber, CFA, CPA — Managing Director, Finance, Strategy & Operations, CDB Advisory Services. Published by CDB Advisory Services, July 30, 2026.
Original analysis by the author, drawn from his own engagements. Clients are described by size and industry only, in keeping with confidentiality obligations. No third-party content is reproduced. © 2026 CDB Advisory Services. All rights reserved.