07Scale
An improvement creates lasting value only when others can run it without the person who built it.
Add-on acquisitions reached 57.7% of all European private equity deals in the first half of 2026, a decade high and the third consecutive quarter near record levels. Building on what you already own is now the main way value is created.
Scale in practice
We make it repeatable, then connect it to what we already own, so each business carries costs and capability it could not carry alone.
An improvement that works in one site, one region or one team must be transferable before it creates lasting value. Making improvements transferable is the difference between a good year and a business worth more.
Our approach
So we treat replication as an operating discipline, not a rollout. What made it work, what was local to that site, what has to be standard and what can stay different. Then the standards, the platforms and the training that let ordinary management run it.
Group integration
At the Scale stage, businesses stop operating separately. Shared systems, shared buying power and shared capability mean each one carries costs it could not carry alone, and the group is worth more than the sum of what was bought.
Our experience
We have done this across sites, countries and businesses: shared services and capability centres, common platforms across operating companies, and integrating acquisitions onto a model rather than leaving each one as it was found.
What we do as owner
Then we connect it to what we already own.
- Separating what moved the number from the circumstances around it
- Standards and playbooks written at the level the next site can follow
- What must be standard and what can stay local, decided rather than assumed
- Training, so it runs without the person who built it
- Measurement per site, so replication is proved rather than assumed
- Repeatable sales model and commercial playbooks
- Route to market and channel expansion
- Geographic and multi-site expansion
- Account development playbooks
- Digital channel and conversion, where volume is won or lost
- Proposition and portfolio economics by segment
- Shared platforms, common data and reporting
- Operating standards and playbooks
- Shared services and capability centres
- Add-on integration onto the platform
- Shared buying power and supplier terms across the group
- Shared finance and technology capability, carried once rather than in each business
- Management capability and succession
- Capability transfer and knowledge handover
- Partner and vendor network
- The people who will run it once we step back
- What breaks when it doubles: the constraint at the next size
For owners who are not seeking a sale, the same capability is available as an executive mandate through Advisory.