The 100-day plan is the PE owner's operating contract with the company. It is a written, calendared plan covering the first 100 days — the period during which most of the value-creation thesis is locked in or lost.
The plan, structured
People: assess the management team, decide on upgrades within 60 days, retain key talent, design the equity rollover. Finance and reporting: install the monthly reporting pack, the budget process, and the cash-flow forecast. Operations: identify quick wins (procurement consolidation, SG&A trims, working-capital tightening) and execute them. Strategy: validate or refine the value-creation thesis based on the first 90 days of internal data.
The plan is a written document, owned by the deal partner and the new CFO/CEO jointly. Each workstream has a named owner, a list of milestones, and a weekly review.
The management decision
The most consequential 100-day call is on management. PE-backed companies frequently change CEO or CFO within the first 6 months, often within the first 100 days. This is a hard call when the existing CEO sold the deal. The discipline is to assess against the value-creation thesis specifically — not against general capability — and to act decisively if the answer is no.
Reporting cadence
Modern PE companies operate on monthly closes within 8–10 business days, monthly board packs, weekly KPI dashboards on revenue and key operational metrics, quarterly strategy reviews. The cadence itself enforces discipline: a CEO who has to report monthly on margin progress acts on margin progress.