I got hired to put an S&OP process in place...the moment I arrived, it turned out their problem was not the lack of S&OP process, BUT the lack of knowing what they have just bought in operations and supply chain...pretty tall order when you want profit from your M&A and it delivers bad surprises.

My method is to go through the value chain landscape in full to find: lack of purpose of processes, out of sync or alignment to business need, lack of real cost visibility & misalignment to risk profile and strategy profile, which are significant drivers of losing money at M&A and/or after the transaction for a prolonged period of time.

No shortcut, no missed insights = knowing the real value to pay. Just because the financial numbers don't tell the details, it does not mean there are no specifics to find and deal with.