What a Readiness Score Actually Measures

The score measures whether something is established and evidenced, not whether it is favourable. A business with heavy customer concentration can still score at the top of revenue quality documentation, because the concentration is measured, documented, and disclosed.

A score that rewards good numbers instead of known numbers stops being a readiness measure and becomes an attractiveness rating. That is a different thing entirely, and it is not something we publish.

Each listing is scored from 1 to 5 on financial integrity, audit and compliance, owner independence, revenue quality documentation, and the state of the data room. The criteria for the bottom and top of each scale are published on the listing itself.

A score nobody can reproduce reads as an opinion. A score with stated criteria reads as a measurement. It also lets an owner see exactly what moves a business from one score to the next, which is what makes the standard useful before a process rather than only during one.

The overall result is a band: Foundation, Progressing, Prepared, or Diligence-Ready. A decimal average invites an argument that a stated threshold does not, and a false-precision number is harder to defend than a band with defined entry criteria.

Scores are entered by the engagement lead against the published criteria. They are never computed from a formula the criteria do not describe.

A listing publishes verified facts from the preparation work, the readiness score, the basis of information, and the open items we know about. It does not publish our view on whether the business is worth acquiring, what it is worth, or who should buy it.

Valuation, strategic fit analysis, and scored diligence on a specific target are scoped engagements, delivered to an engaged client under NDA. Publishing them on a listing would give away the work and take on exposure at the same time.

Every listing states its open items plainly. A register that only publishes good news reads as a sales sheet, and the disclosed gaps are what make the other findings believable.

The standing line above every listing says the same thing in one sentence: these are findings and measurements from our preparation work, not a recommendation. Whether a business fits your thesis, and what it is worth to you, are your judgement.