Technology Due Diligence for M&A in Pasadena
Before you sign, you should know what you are actually buying: which systems the company runs on, who controls them, what security debt comes along, and what it will cost to fold the target into your own operation. We give you that picture in writing, in language a buyer can act on. Sentinel-Pros works for the buyer, not the seller, and not the software vendors.
The Problem
Most acquisitions in the Pasadena market are industrial services, contracting, logistics, or healthcare businesses that grew up around a founder and a bookkeeper. The estimating logic lives in one person's spreadsheet, the job costing lives in an accounting package nobody has upgraded in years, and the contractor prequalification accounts at ISNetworld or Avetta are registered to an email address that belongs to a retiring safety manager. Nothing on the seller's system list tells you that. Buyers find out after close, when a plant customer asks for proof of controls and the records cannot be produced, or when integrating two email tenants turns into a six month project that nobody budgeted. The purchase price gets negotiated on EBITDA while the technology risk gets discovered on day forty.
The Solution
We run a structured buy side assessment inside your diligence window and deliver a written findings package with a cost range attached to each issue. The work is remote first: we review documentation, run read only scans where the seller permits access, and interview the people who actually operate the systems. When the target sits in Pasadena or elsewhere in the Houston metro and a site walk matters, for example a plant support office or a dispatch yard near the Ship Channel, we schedule on-site time from Houston. We do not sell you the remediation software, and we will tell you plainly when a finding is a price adjustment rather than a deal breaker.
Core Responsibilities
What We Inventory
Risk We Surface
What You Get Before You Sign
Engagement Process
Scope Against the Deal
We start from your letter of intent and your diligence calendar. You tell us the thesis, whether this is a bolt on to an existing platform or a standalone, and how much access the seller has agreed to grant. We size the review to fit the time you actually have.
Discover the Real Environment
Document review, guided interviews with the people who run the systems, and read only technical collection where permitted. We look past the org chart at what the operators do every day, because in a contracting or logistics business the documented process and the working process are rarely the same thing.
Quantify Risk and Integration Cost
Every finding gets a business consequence and a cost range. Deferred maintenance, license true ups, security gaps, and migration effort are separated so your deal team can decide what belongs in the price, what belongs in an escrow, and what is simply a post close project.
Report and Hand Off
You get a written report, a call to walk your team and your counsel through it, and a day one integration plan. If you close, we can stay on to execute that plan or hand it cleanly to your existing IT provider.
More for Pasadena Businesses
Common Questions
How long does a technology diligence review take?
It depends on the size of the target and how much access the seller grants, and we scope it to your diligence window rather than the other way around. A small single location company moves quickly. A contractor with multiple yards, field systems, and a separate accounting platform takes longer, and we will tell you up front what we can and cannot cover in the time available.
The seller will not give us system access before close. Can you still help?
Yes, with a narrower scope. Document review, structured interviews, licensing and contract analysis, and external observation still surface most of the expensive surprises. We flag clearly in the report which conclusions are evidence based and which are inference, so you know where your residual risk sits.
Do you assess plant control systems and operational technology?
We assess the business technology environment and we identify where it touches operational systems, which matters for Pasadena targets that support refinery and terminal customers. Where a target owns deep process control assets, we scope that portion with an OT specialist rather than pretend it is the same discipline. Telling you honestly where our line is protects your deal more than overreaching would.
What about the contractor prequalification and customer portal accounts?
We treat those as first class assets, because in the Ship Channel contracting world they gate revenue. We identify who owns each account, whether credentials transfer, what safety and insurance documentation lives inside, and what has to happen at close so the target does not lose eligibility to bid.
Can you help after the deal closes?
Yes. Many buyers keep us on to run the integration we scoped, or to serve as fractional CIO for the combined company while it stabilizes. There is no obligation to continue, and the diligence report is written to be useful to whoever executes it. Pricing for any follow on work is scoped on a discovery call as a fixed monthly retainer.
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BOOK A CONSULTATIONTechnology Due Diligence for M&A for Pasadena, Texas
Pasadena is a consolidation market. Industrial service companies clustered around the Houston Ship Channel and the Bayport industrial district, scaffolding, insulation, valve repair, turnaround labor, tank cleaning, industrial electrical, are exactly the kind of founder owned businesses that private equity platforms and larger strategics have been rolling up. The same is true of drayage and warehousing operators moving containers off the docks, and of physician practices in the HCA Houston Healthcare Southeast referral area. Buyers in these deals inherit a specific and repeatable set of technology problems. Revenue depends on staying in good standing with plant customers, which means safety, insurance, and training records must be retrievable on demand from prequalification portals. Job margin depends on estimating and job costing logic that often lives in an unbacked spreadsheet on one estimator's laptop. Field crews work at customer sites behind customer security rules, so remote access is usually messier than the seller describes. Healthcare targets add patient records and business associate obligations. San Jacinto College feeds skilled labor into these companies but not IT administrators, so target after target runs on a part time consultant with no documentation. Because we are based in Houston, we can walk a Pasadena yard or office during diligence rather than judging it from a document room.
See the statewide overview of Technology Due Diligence for M&A or all services available in Pasadena.