Technology Due Diligence for M&A in Katy
Before you sign, you should know what you are actually buying: the systems, the security debt, the contracts that renew on their own, and the real cost of making the target work alongside your own company. We examine the technology the way a buyer needs it examined, then put a number and a timeline on what comes after close.
The Problem
Deals on the west side move quickly. An engineering firm on the Grand Parkway buys a smaller competitor, an energy services company takes over a shop with field crews and its own scheduling software, a physician group near Houston Methodist West absorbs a practice running a different record system entirely. The financial and legal review is careful and complete. Technology gets a fifteen minute phone call with whoever the seller refers to as their IT guy. Then the first quarter after close delivers the surprises: software licensed to a person who left two years ago, a server that cannot be patched without breaking the drawing archive, backups nobody has ever restored, and an integration bill that was never in the model.
The Solution
Sentinel-Pros works for the buyer and takes no fee from the target vendors, so there is no incentive to look for a future contract instead of the truth. We inventory systems, licensing, security posture, contracts, and key person risk, then translate the findings into money and time: what must be fixed before close, what can wait a year, and what integration will realistically cost. Most of the work is remote, run through structured document requests and interviews with seller staff, and since Katy sits inside our home metro we can walk a plant office, a design floor, or a clinic in person when the environment needs eyes on it. You receive a written report suitable for your lender, your board, or your attorney, plus a working call on what actually matters. Pricing is scoped on a discovery call and delivered as a fixed monthly retainer.
Core Responsibilities
What gets inspected
What the report tells you
Carrying it past signing
Engagement Process
Scope against the deal
We start with the transaction itself: size, structure, whether the seller stays on, and how long you have until close. A tuck in acquisition of eight people deserves a very different review than a company with three locations and field crews, and the scope should reflect that.
Request, interview, verify
A structured document request goes to the seller, followed by interviews with whoever actually administers the systems. We verify what we can observe directly rather than accepting a questionnaire at face value, because sellers are rarely hiding anything and frequently do not know.
Price the findings
Every finding is translated into cost, effort, and urgency. That is the step most technical reviews skip, and it is the only form the information is useful in when you are sitting across from a seller or in front of a lender.
Report and walk through
You get the written report, an executive summary your attorney can lift language from, and a session to talk through the items that could change price, structure, or timing. If the deal proceeds, that report becomes the integration plan.
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Common Questions
How long does a review take, and can it keep up with our close date?
For a company under a hundred and fifty people the field work is usually a matter of days once the seller responds to the document request. The bottleneck is almost never our side; it is how quickly the target produces access and answers. Tell us the close date at the start and we will say honestly whether the scope fits it.
The seller does not want us poking around before the deal is certain. How do you handle that?
Carefully, because a target that feels raided stops cooperating. We work through the point of contact the seller chooses, keep requests proportionate to deal size, and can run a limited review built on interviews and documentation rather than direct system access. That buys you less certainty, and we say so plainly in the report instead of papering over it.
We are buying a small practice that feeds Houston Methodist West. What is different about healthcare targets?
Patient data and HIPAA obligations travel with the entity, so the review has to cover business associate agreements, where records physically live, who can reach them, and whether any breach or complaint history exists. A record system migration is also among the most expensive integrations in any industry, and it needs pricing before you sign rather than discovery afterward.
Do you also work the sell side?
Yes, and it is worth doing well before a letter of intent. Sellers who clean up licensing, document access, and prove their backups restore remove the exact findings a buyer would otherwise use to argue for a lower price or a holdback. On any single transaction we work one side only, and both parties are told which.
What happens if the review finds something serious?
You get it in plain language with a cost attached and a view on whether it is a walk away issue, a price issue, or a fix it later issue. Most findings are the third kind. Our job is not to kill transactions; it is to make sure nothing in the technology estate is a surprise after the wire goes out.
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BOOK A CONSULTATIONTechnology Due Diligence for M&A for Katy, Texas
Katy produces a specific kind of deal. The engineering and energy services firms clustered along I-10 at the west end of the Energy Corridor and up the Grand Parkway are exactly the size that gets acquired: twenty to a hundred and fifty people, owner operated, profitable, and running on systems the founder selected more than a decade ago. Buyers are often larger Houston groups or out of state platforms who assume a company that size has ordinary IT, then find a file server in a closet holding every drawing the firm has ever produced, seat licenses attached to a departed employee, and no written record of who can reach what. Healthcare deals here carry their own version of the problem: practices feeding Houston Methodist West and Memorial Hermann Katy come with record systems, patient data, and obligations that follow the entity through the transaction. Retail and franchise groups around Katy Mills and LaCenterra bring point of sale estates, card handling, and store level networks assembled one location at a time with no standard between them. Rapid growth across the west side means many of these companies added sites and staff faster than they added discipline, so the technology story is nearly always a sequence of decisions made under pressure. Finding that before close costs far less than finding it after.
See the statewide overview of Technology Due Diligence for M&A or all services available in Katy.