Subscription-Revenue Commercial Diligence Director

The mandate

The target reports strong recurring growth, but large reseller bookings precede activation, implementation backlogs delay billable use and minimum commitments mask falling shipment volume. Price uplift and currency movement are combined with product expansion. The investor needs a customer-level view of retained economics and implementation capacity before funding international growth.

The eight-week deliverable includes a contracted-to-live revenue bridge, customer and reseller cohort book, recurring gross-margin model and downside case. Milestone one closes source reconciliation in week two; milestone two establishes activation, retention and expansion cohorts in week four; milestone three completes pricing, margin and capacity stresses in week six; milestone four delivers investment conclusions and value sensitivities.

The client will provide contracts, billing, bookings, product usage, implementation milestones, reseller settlements, support effort, cloud cost, sales compensation and customer-reference access. Acceptance requires reported recurring revenue to reconcile to contract and invoice populations, cohort movements to explain opening-to-closing value, and three downside cases to flow through cash and valuation. Deal and operating partners jointly approve the book.

The assignment excludes legal review of contracts, technical product diligence, tax opinions, independent valuation, customer solicitation and go-to-market design. Consultants may quantify reseller and implementation dependencies but cannot determine enforceability, set strategy or approve investment. Customer interviews follow buyer protocols and cannot disclose the transaction beyond approved language.

Every cohort, price-volume, implementation and margin calculation will remain formula-transparent. The buyer team must ingest one late billing month and recalculate a selected market without consultant intervention before acceptance. Post-close revenue operations or integration work requires separate commissioning.

Why this is external work

Target sales teams optimise bookings, customer success emphasises relationships and finance reports contracted measures, creating different truths about recurrence. The investor lacks an enduring logistics-software revenue analytics team. External commercial diligence can connect contract, activation and usage evidence without writing the investment thesis. It also provides disciplined scepticism before attractive channel growth is capitalised into the entry price.

What you will own

• Reconcile bookings, executed contracts, invoices, collections, product activation and reported recurring revenue by customer, reseller and market.
• Build monthly cohorts for new, retained, expanded, contracted, churned, paused and implementation-delayed customer populations.
• Separate list price, negotiated uplift, usage volume, currency, product mix and reseller effects on reported revenue growth.
• Quantify recurring gross margin through cloud consumption, support demand, implementation subsidy, third-party data and contracted service obligations.
• Test reseller concentration, minimum commitments, end-customer visibility, renewal control, channel inventory and payment behaviour.
• Stress implementation capacity, activation delay, shipment contraction, failed price uplift and weaker product expansion simultaneously.
• Deliver source reconciliation, customer cohort book, recurring-margin bridge, downside scenarios and investment-committee narrative with confidence limits.

Candidate qualifications

• Led commercial and financial diligence of subscription logistics software with reseller, usage and implementation complexity across markets.
• Rebuilt recurring revenue from executed contracts, billing, activation and product telemetry rather than management labels.
• Distinguished price, currency, shipment volume, product expansion and minimum-commitment effects inside monthly customer cohorts.
• Quantified recurring margin after cloud consumption, support intensity, implementation subsidy and third-party service obligations.
• Tested reseller economics where bookings, minimums and reported retention obscured end-customer adoption or churn.
• Delivered transparent cohort models that investment teams refreshed independently through final bid, financing and negotiation.

Non-negotiables

• Can begin within five business days and complete two customer-market visits during eight weeks.
• Will disclose target, reseller, customer, investor, lender and competing-software relationships.
• Brings subscription diligence with reseller and activation depth; headline recurring-revenue analysis is insufficient.
• Accepts client-controlled outreach and no authority over contracts, strategy, valuation or investment approval.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a subscription cohort where contracted recurrence diverged materially from live customer economics.
2. 49 words maximum. Which reseller evidence best reveals hidden channel inventory or end-customer churn?
3. 49 words maximum. Name any target, customer, channel or investor relationship affecting your independence.