Modernization Shield™ for Private Equity
Independent technical due diligence for legacy-heavy targets and portfolio companies.
Ten business days. Fixed fee. Suitable for IC presentation.
The questions you cannot answer from the data room.
A target's data room shows you the financials, the customer base, the leadership team, the legal exposure. It does not show you what is actually inside the code. The technical questions arrive later, and they arrive expensively.
- The sponsor wants a defensible technical view by the IC date and your usual diligence path is not built for legacy .NET systems
- A portfolio company's modernization plan keeps slipping and the operating partner is being asked why
- An undisclosed dependency on an unsupported platform surfaces 60 days after close and reframes the value creation plan
- A bolt-on acquisition runs on technology nobody has fully diagrammed since the founder left
- An IC member asks "did we do technical due diligence" and the honest answer is "the broker said it was fine"
- The portfolio company's CTO needs an outside read because the internal team cannot assess itself
When one of these questions lands without a defensible answer, the consequence is measured in delayed deals, blown synergies, and value creation plans that miss in ways that show up at exit. Modernization Shield™ produces an evidence-based answer in ten business days, before the question becomes a deal problem.
What you actually get.
The Legacy Modernization Risk Report is a single decision-ready document plus a structured evidence appendix. It is designed to be read in 30 to 45 minutes by a CTO-in-Residence, then handed to an Operating Partner for a 10-minute scan, then dropped into an IC packet without rework.
What the LMRR contains:
- A Modernization Readiness Score (0 to 100) anchored to a four-dimension EARS radar (Platform Obsolescence, Architectural Coupling, Dependency Risk, Change Safety). The score is defensible, the dimensions are reproducible, and the result fits on a single slide.
- A prioritized Risk Register. Each finding is structured with twelve fields: Risk ID, category, probability, impact, priority rating, confidence, and a recommended action among them. No prose essays, no consultant hedging. Every finding is scored on the same schema.
- Modernization sequencing guidance. A phased path that translates the findings into a 100-day plan input, with an expected score trajectory across phases.
- Three companion documents: a System and Architecture Overview for the technical evaluator, a Modernization Blockers document for the value creation conversation, and an Evidence Appendix that traces every finding back to raw signal data.
The deliverable is fixed-format. Every Modernization Shield™ engagement produces the same document structure, the same scoring model, and the same Risk Register schema. A PE firm that engages Evincia twice receives directly comparable artifacts, which is the difference between a productized assessment and a bespoke consulting deliverable.
Pricing is fixed at $15,000 to $20,000 per engagement, depending on solution size and the number of stakeholder interviews required. Same pricing for pre-close due diligence and post-close portfolio review. No tiered rates, no urgency premium, no scope-creep risk.
What it looks like in practice.
The Composite Manufacturing Group LMRR is the reference implementation of the Modernization Shield™ methodology. It demonstrates every component of the diagnostic framework against a realistic mid-market .NET scenario built around a private equity sponsor context: a recently-acquired manufacturer running a legacy .NET Framework 4.7 ERP platform with a SQL Server backend, evaluated for modernization readiness ahead of a planned production scheduling AI initiative.
The sample shows what a PE buyer receives at the end of an engagement:
- The full Executive Summary suitable for IC presentation
- A Modernization Readiness Score of 52 out of 100 (Yellow zone, Shield Required)
- An eighteen-finding Risk Register with each finding scored on the twelve-field schema
- A three-phase modernization sequencing plan that moves the score from 52 to 82 over twelve to fifteen months
- References to the three companion documents (System and Architecture Overview, Modernization Blockers, Evidence Appendix)
The sample is a constructed example. No real engagement is being represented. It exists so that PE buyers can see the exact structure, depth, and analytical rigor of the deliverable they would receive from a Modernization Shield™ engagement before committing to one.
If your portfolio looks like this — mid-market, legacy .NET on SQL Server, modernization on the horizon — this is the report you would receive.
How the engagement works.
Modernization Shield™ runs the same fixed-scope, ten-business-day engagement whether the sponsor is corporate, private equity, or strategic. The full phase-by-phase breakdown lives on the Modernization Shield page. For a PE-specific engagement, the sequencing is:
- Kickoff with the sponsor or operating partner: scope confirmation, technical access, stakeholder identification (1 to 2 days)
- Diagnostic engine run plus expert code and architecture review: the deterministic engine extracts the structured signal data; the expert review interprets it against the actual codebase and stakeholder interviews (3 to 5 days)
- Synthesis and risk scoring: findings prioritized, Modernization Readiness Score calculated, sequencing guidance drafted (2 to 3 days)
- LMRR delivered with a working session for the technical evaluator and a separate readout suitable for IC presentation (1 to 2 days)
Two layers produce the deliverable. The first is a deterministic diagnostic engine that extracts signal data the same way every time, against any .NET solution, and produces structured output that defends every finding back to its evidence. The second is an experienced architect who reads the codebase directly, interviews the people who built it, and interprets what the engine surfaces against the things engines cannot see: undocumented architectural decisions, embedded business logic, and the institutional knowledge that lives in heads rather than code. Neither layer alone is sufficient. The combination is what makes the LMRR defensible in front of an IC and actionable for the operating team.
The engagement runs against the sponsor's calendar, not against ours. Pre-close technical due diligence with a tight signing date and post-close portfolio review with a longer planning horizon use the same methodology and produce the same deliverable. The only difference is the kickoff timing.
Start with a sample.
The Composite Manufacturing Group LMRR is the fastest way to evaluate whether Modernization Shield™ fits the situation. It takes 30 to 45 minutes to read and shows you exactly what your engagement would produce.
If a Modernization Shield™ engagement makes sense for the target or portfolio company you are evaluating, we will tell you. If a different approach would serve you better, we will tell you that too.