The Checklist
Day One is a calendar, not a date.
Free. No marketing follow on. Read it before Day Minus 90, when the dependencies are still movable.
Around two hundred line items across the nine standard workstreams. IT, finance, HR, treasury, procurement, tax, legal, cybersecurity, and Newco commercial operations. The version used inside live engagements, not the version printed in the consulting deck.
The checklist is structured workstream by workstream, with each line item carrying an owner, a dependency, a deadline, and the evidence the buyer needs to close the line. The order of operations matters. The dependencies are real.
Application inventory, identity stand-up, network cutover, data extraction, license assignment, end user computing, and the seller dependencies that persist beyond Day One.
Chart of accounts, general ledger cutover, monthly close mechanics, the management reporting pack, and the trial balance reconciliation owed back to the parent.
Bank account opening, signing authority, ERP integration, payment file routing, FX hedging policy, and the working capital line that has to be drawable on Day Two.
Employee transfer mechanics, payroll cutover, benefits enrollment, time and attendance, the talent gap list, and the retention plan for the operationally critical employees.
The contract inventory split into assignable, replicate, terminate, and renegotiate. The Day One vendor master. The supplier communications cascade.
Entity setup, transfer pricing, tax registrations, cybersecurity stand-up, the legal and regulatory inventory, and the Newco commercial operations workstream that ties everything together.
"The dependencies are the value. I have read three Day One checklists this year. This is the only one that admits which workstreams run on top of which other ones."
CIO, industrial Newco
Free. No marketing follow on. Read it before Day Minus 90, when the dependencies are still movable.