Portco Technology Advisors
ERP & AI program leadership · Private equity portfolios

Tier‑1 program leadership for the portfolio

Enterprise software, run like an investment.

01

Tier‑1 governance

Design and stand up the structure a complex program needs

02

Assurance & recovery

Independent read on live programs — and recovery when one is off track

03

Program execution

Senior leadership accountable for running the program

info@portcotech.com  ·  Chicago & Dallas

Selection is well covered. Execution is where value leaks.

Choosing a platform and an integrator is a bounded exercise. Everything expensive happens after it.

Select  ·  Contract

10–16 weeks  ·  advisory deliverables

Design · Build · Test · Data · Cutover · Hypercare · Stabilize

18–36 months  ·  where the budget, the schedule and the business case are actually decided

Most advisory scopes end here
01

The plan is not the program

A scorecard, an SOW and a business case are inputs. None of them survive first contact with three sites, a data conversion and a fixed go‑live date.

02

Nobody owns the seams

Integrator, internal IT, business owners and third parties each run their lane. Failure lives between the lanes, and no one is staffed to sit there.

03

Recommendations are not accountability

A resource recommendation names a role. It does not put a senior operator in the chair on Monday who is answerable for the date.

Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Where value leaks/ 01

Three ways we engage

The first two are entry points. The third is the work.

01

Governance design & standup

Stand up the tiered governance, cadence, controls and reporting a complex program needs before mobilization — or repair it mid‑flight. Tiered forums, a design authority with real decision rights, a RACI naming people rather than roles, and one integrated plan across SI, internal IT and third parties.

6–10 weeks
02

Assurance & recovery

An independent read on a live program against risk, schedule and objectives — schedule integrity, scope drift, readiness, delivery health and whether the business case still closes. When a program is already in trouble: stabilize, re‑baseline with evidence, then run the recovered plan.

4–6 weeks · independent read
03

Program management execution

Senior program leadership in the chair, accountable for the date, the scope and the business case. Not advice about the program — the running of it. Integration of new acquisitions onto the platform runs under this same layer, applied to an event that repeats.

Primary engagement · multi‑year
Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Engagement models/ 02

A senior operator in the chair, accountable for the outcome

Program management is a cadence, not a document set. This is the machine we install and then run.

01

Own the plan

One integrated schedule across SI, internal IT, third parties and the business. We build it, we baseline it, we defend it.

02

Own the seams

Integration, data conversion, testing and cutover are where programs die. They sit between vendors, so we staff them directly.

03

Own the room

Steering committee materials, executive escalation, sponsor reporting. Decisions get made because someone drove them to a decision.

04

Own the date

Cutover planning, rehearsal, command center, hypercare and stabilization — through to the point the business is actually running on it.

We do not sell licenses, and we do not sell implementation labor. Our only product is whether the program lands.

Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Program execution/ 03

What that looks like in an operating week

The cadence is the control. Everything else is reporting on a program that has already made its decisions.

Daily
  • Delivery standup with SI and internal leads
  • Offshore handoff review — blockers closed inside the day
  • Defect triage against severity and cutover impact
Weekly
  • Workstream review against the baselined plan
  • Risk, issue and decision registers worked, not read
  • Change control board — cost and schedule impact assessed
Monthly
  • Spend versus completion reconciled
  • Steering committee with a defensible position
  • Milestone and readiness assessment by site
  • Forecast to complete re‑cut
At gate
  • Cutover rehearsal and go/no‑go criteria tested
  • Command center stood up and staffed
  • Hypercare model with exit criteria defined up front
  • Stabilization to steady‑state handover
Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Operating cadence/ 04

Preliminary data transformation

Data is the most common cause of a slipped cutover and the least likely to have an owner at the point the work needs to start.

01

Profile

Measure what is actually in the source systems — completeness, duplication, orphaned records, field conformance — before anyone commits to a conversion estimate.

02

Harmonize

Item, customer, vendor and chart of accounts standards agreed across sites and entities. The long pole, and a business decision rather than a technical one.

03

Cleanse

Named owners per data domain and a burn‑down tracked weekly. An integrator cannot cleanse data it does not understand the meaning of.

04

Convert

Mapping, mock loads, reconciliation and sign‑off criteria — rehearsed on the same cadence as cutover, not attempted once beside it.

Why it belongs up front
  • Source data quality drives conversion effort, so it belongs in the integrator's estimate rather than in a later change order
  • Cleansing consumes business capacity, which has to be budgeted and backfilled like any other resource
  • Ownership split in the SOW: the integrator owns tooling and loads, the business owns content and sign‑off
The float problem

A fixed go‑live with cleansing not yet started has already spent its float.

Data prep is the schedule risk that surfaces last and costs most.

Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Data transformation/ 05

Business readiness and change management

The system goes live on a date. The business goes live when people can actually do their jobs in it. Those are not the same event, and only one of them sits on the integrator's plan.

Phase 1 — scope it and size it
  • Stakeholder and impact assessment by site, function and role
  • Change effort sized and costed into the business case rather than discovered as a change order
  • Readiness criteria defined per site and written into the SOW as go‑live gates
  • Training scope, ownership and delivery model agreed with the integrator before contract
Phase 2 — run it
CommunicationsAudience mapping, message ownership and a cadence that runs ahead of each milestone rather than behind it
TrainingRole‑based curricula, job aids in the languages the floor actually uses, delivery scheduled and record kept
AdoptionMeasured against the criteria defined in Phase 1, by site and by role, not by attendance at a session
Readiness gatesBusiness‑owned go/no‑go criteria, tested at mock cutover and enforced at the real one
Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Business readiness/ 06

New acquisitions have to land on the platform

Portfolio companies buy businesses running mid‑market systems. Every one of those is a program — and it happens again.

01

Diligence

System landscape, data quality and integration debt assessed before close, so the cost sits in the deal model rather than surfacing after it.

02

Day 1

Statutory reporting, consolidation and TSA exit clocks. What must be true on day one is a far shorter list than most teams assume.

03

Interim state

Bolt‑on or absorb. Interim integrations and a mapped consolidation layer that buys time without quietly becoming permanent.

04

Template adoption

Migration onto the target platform — the only end state that stops the estate fragmenting one acquisition at a time.

The second one should cost less than the first. That only holds if the same layer runs both — a repeatable motion that travels deal to deal.

Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Acquisition integration/ 07

Why this is different from both alternatives

The independent has no depth. The large firm has depth you do not get to use. We are built for the middle of that.

Independent contractor
Portco Technology Advisors
Large firm
Availability
Available when between engagements. Their next extension is your gap.
A focused network doing this same work. Capacity is planned, not scavenged.
Capacity on demand, assembled from who is available that month.
Who does the work
One person. What they cannot cover stays uncovered.
The people you meet are the people who run it.
Partner sells. Managers and analysts deliver.
Continuity
Ends when the contract ends.
Same leadership for the life of the program.
Rotation is normal and priced in.
Commercial model
Low rate. No depth behind it.
Senior rates with no pyramid to fund.
Premium blended rate built on leverage.
Accountability
Accountable for their tasks.
Accountable for whether the program lands.
Accountable to the statement of work.

Independent contractor

Availability
Available when between engagements. Their next extension is your gap.
Who does the work
One person. What they cannot cover stays uncovered.
Continuity
Ends when the contract ends.
Commercial model
Low rate. No depth behind it.
Accountability
Accountable for their tasks.

Portco Technology Advisors

Availability
A focused network doing this same work. Capacity is planned, not scavenged.
Who does the work
The people you meet are the people who run it.
Continuity
Same leadership for the life of the program.
Commercial model
Senior rates with no pyramid to fund.
Accountability
Accountable for whether the program lands.

Large firm

Availability
Capacity on demand, assembled from who is available that month.
Who does the work
Partner sells. Managers and analysts deliver.
Continuity
Rotation is normal and priced in.
Commercial model
Premium blended rate built on leverage.
Accountability
Accountable to the statement of work.
Portco Technology Advisors  ·  The alternatives/ 08

Independent by construction

Our read on a program can be trusted because we have nothing downstream of it to sell.

No license revenue

We are not a reseller for any platform. Fit is assessed on fit.

No implementation bench

We do not bid the build work we help you scope, so scope is not a pipeline.

No integrator alliance

We hold the SI to the contract because we have no relationship to protect.

Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Independence/ 09

Senior program managers. That is the entire firm.

Everyone you meet has run a Tier‑1 program end to end. No one is learning on your engagement.

10 – 20+

years running ERP programs — and recent AI initiatives

5

platforms hands‑on: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Infor, IFS

CPA · MBA · PMP

plus Six Sigma and TOGAF — finance‑literate program leadership

End to end

selection through hypercare and stabilization

Roger Kuhn

Founder, Managing Partner

CPA and MBA. Decades of ERP program management experience across manufacturing, distribution and services. Ran a multi‑year Oracle ERP implementation for a PE‑owned industrial manufacturer; currently leads a multi‑wave D365 rollout program office at a private equity portfolio company.

CPAMBAChicago

Richard Kusse

Chief Operating Officer

Senior ERP program manager with deep delivery experience across sponsor‑backed businesses. Leads program execution engagements alongside the managing partner rather than beneath one, and owns how the firm staffs, measures and repeats its delivery model across engagements.

Program deliveryMulti‑site cutover

Jeff Homan

AI Program Leader

PMP, Six Sigma and TOGAF certified. Runs the AI program management office at our anchor engagement — use‑case governance, prioritization and delivery tracking alongside the core ERP program. Prior practice‑building at national firms: IT M&A, CIO advisory, and software selections.

PMPSix SigmaTOGAF

No pyramid to feed, no bench of juniors to place, no one billing you while they come up to speed.

Portco Technology Advisors  ·  Chicago & Dallas/ 10
Where to start

A bounded assessment, not a proposal.

We are best suited to a portfolio company with a program about to mobilize, already in flight, or visibly off track — or an acquisition that has to be folded onto the platform.

Email Portcotech
Chicago
Headquarters

Firm operations and the Midwest manufacturing and distribution practice.

Dallas
Office

Southwest coverage for sponsor and portfolio company engagements across Texas and the surrounding region.

Portco Technology Advisors  ·  ERP & AI program leadershipChicago & Dallas