Advisory · Chicago

Value capture and M&A transaction services for public, private and sponsor-backed companies.

We work where strategy is set, value is sized and stakeholders ask how it will be delivered. Rigorous research, data modeling and technology give our clients' leaders a roadmap they can execute and a defensible value case. It is built by operators who have carried the accountability themselves, with leadership bringing over 50 years in the Big Four and more than 10 years in practice at Alio.

Talk to us Bring us a question

What We Do

Two practices, one operating model.

Each practice answers a different question and lands a different result. Underneath they share one working model of your business, one evidence base and one team, so an engagement can start in either practice and carry into the other without a handoff.

Practice 01

Value Capture

Strategy, margin, cost and cash, sized from evidence and reconciled to reported results.

Additional information Practice 02

M&A Transaction Services

Thesis through close and the first hundred days, with one team throughout.

Additional information

We work with public, private and sponsor-backed companies in industrials, manufacturing, aerospace and defense, consumer goods, technology, and business and professional services, typically between $50m and $1bn in revenue.

How We Work

One arc for every engagement, run as phases rather than a calendar. Each phase ends when its output stands up.

Understand

Your context absorbed: a secure tenant stood up, your data, priorities and constraints taken in, and the problem framed in your terms.

M&A: Thesis and perimeter agreed
Value: Issues and ambition framed

Diagnose

A working model of your business. The baseline rebuilt from source, with gaps, risks and signals on the table fast.

M&A: Red flags and earnings quality
Value: Baseline and value at stake

Architect

The agenda, priced and ranked. Every option sized and sequenced by value at stake, with decisions ready to be taken.

M&A: Synergy case and roadmap
Value: Value-creation plan

Execute

The plan in execution, monitored in the platform, with results visible as they happen.

M&A: Day 1 to Day 100, synergy capture
Value: Initiatives to P&L impact

Compound

The model keeps learning after close, so every future question starts ahead.

M&A: A playbook for the next deal
Value: Capability stays with your team

Start Here

Bring us a real case or a hypothetical.

We respond with a proposed engagement model, scope and viable proof-of-concept examples: what we need, what we build, and what you keep.

Outside-in diagnostic

A working model of your market, competitors and capabilities, built from the public record and our standing data feeds. No client data, no system access and no NDA required to begin. Hypotheses turn research into viable business-case options, and we say which we would test first.

Discrete value capture measurement

One lever or one plan initiative. We highlight the additional considerations, the evidence and steps we would take to move a strategic plan into tactics, and the variables we would incorporate.

Deal assessment

Send a thesis, a brief or a preliminary diligence file. We evaluate it for additional red flags, the levers that matter, and what diligence should test first.

Operations review

Our view of the value-chain components, core and leading capabilities, and the supporting requirements to reach the next level of results.

Discrete support

Not everything fits a practice. We take on execution assistance, bespoke strategy review and analysis, digital and technical assessments, benchmarking and research, and other defined pieces of work where we can be useful. Describe the scope and we will tell you plainly whether it is ours.

Whichever of these fits, or none of them: describe the question or situation and we'll respond promptly with a perspective, a potential engagement model, scope and a scheduled debrief.

Our Work

Exit readiness across margin and operations Revenue was growing while sales per customer fell An integration plan in two weeks instead of two months An executive transition and a roadmap before the new leader arrived Portfolio prioritization across three business units and ten end markets

Selected engagements.

Composites from engagements we have led across client types and scopes. In each case our models set the priorities, the sequence and the qualified impact; we then built the execution plan and brought in the expertise to deliver it. Each example is rooted in a base-case analysis, with the internal techniques used noted under Method.

Value Capture · Costing and exit

Exit readiness across margin and operations

Situation: A consumer-goods company preparing for sale, with manual processes, key-person risk and an operating cost base that constrained the margins a buyer would pay for.
What we did: Our models costed every SKU and every customer served, and found cost anomalies across families of similar products and components. That forced a costing, manufacturing and procurement review: we improved standard costing and procurement, identified sub-component populations for contract manufacturing, and redesigned the invoice, vendor, logistics and reporting processes the changes touched. We built a multi-phase execution plan with management and brought in the specialists to stand up an offshore contract-manufacturing operation and the new costing and reporting process.
Method: Base case: full costing and cost-to-serve modeling at SKU level. Enhanced with standard-costing simulation, inventory-turn analysis and manufacturing-contract benchmarking, opportunity identification across back-office processes, and the data interfaces supporting the redesigned processes.
Result: A path to 15–18% input-cost reduction through a new contract-manufacturing partner and standard costing from actuals, with the lower-volume SKUs that had been below fully loaded cost returned to margin. Month-end close came down from over four weeks of effort to under two. A 33-initiative roadmap across process, accounting and systems was sequenced to exit, and SG&A was reorganized around a capability-driven operating model. Product-level profitability measures and a management reporting package were put in place. The company, in the $250–350m revenue range, was acquired by a public strategic buyer at a multiple 1.8x higher than its prior valuation.

Value Capture · Strategic diagnostic

Revenue was growing while sales per customer fell

Situation: A national design, packaging and marketing services company had over-extended a roll-up strategy. New locations were adding revenue while existing customers bought less, cost measures were deteriorating across service lines and geographies, and a fragmented footprint of overlapping sales locations made the causes invisible.
What we did: We built a data model from historical customer profiles, demographics and sales history across fragmented ERP, POS and CRM records, assessed more than 70 locations, and mapped profit by location and service, including service revenue that overlapped across sites. We presented three options to consolidate or migrate service types, with a roadmap, to the executive team.
Method: Base case: footprint, location and historical-record analysis. Enhanced with customer modeling from demographic and purchase records and profit-pool mapping.
Result: Target locations and customer approaches were refined; the location assessment was used in lease negotiations to recover committed spend and reallocate resources. A modified version of the consolidation plan for services and footprint was adopted by the board, leading to reduced spend.

Customer personas, location assessment and profit pools across more than 70 locations.

M&A Transaction Services · Corporate serial acquirer

An integration plan in two weeks instead of two months

Situation: A corporate serial acquirer had several deals in flight and limited internal bandwidth to stand up a robust, multi-workstream integration strategy, and needed a bespoke integration plan and assessment covering TSA exit planning, migration activities and workplans. The scope went beyond prior integrations because of added regulatory, compliance and legal-entity complexity, and the cost model assumed an accelerated consolidation of ERP, CRM and other platforms.
What we did: Using our own integration application, we layered the deal context of both acquirer and target (data populations, locations, functions) over a universal catalogue of workstreams, embedded risk areas and typical workplans to generate a complete integration plan with ownership, dependencies, risk factors and prepopulated workplan templates.
Method: In-house tools applied the workplan catalogue, industry taxonomies and historical deal experience to fast-track the prototype workplan and execution plan, surfacing key decisions early, controlling spend and reducing the cost of integration execution for a dedicated operations team.
Result: Integration planning reduced from 45–60 days to two weeks, so integration began immediately after close: 78 critical tasks with named owners across more than twelve workstreams, and an estimated four to five weeks of team effort saved. Key decisions, risk factors and execution ran ahead of schedule; program integration targets were maintained and deal assumptions met.

Deal Mapper integration checklist, Day 1 view — Integration checklist at Day 1: workstreams, owners, dependencies and risk flags.

Value Capture · Operations · CFO transition

An executive transition and a roadmap before the new leader arrived

Situation: The sponsor was planning a CFO transition at a packaging and distribution company in the $150–250m revenue range and asked for a rapid, workshop-based assessment of back-office operations, management reporting and SG&A, with a review of red-flag areas left unaddressed by previous acquisitions and lingering integration work.
What we did: We ran executive debrief sessions and a one-day senior workshop with stakeholders across the reporting functions, each focused on specific capabilities and constraints against selected benchmarks and KPI measures of current performance, to identify and quantify improvement areas. Our models, benchmarks and prior capability models in industrial services set the priorities and the sequence for an improvement roadmap and a value-capture bridge.
Method: Base case: capability workshops and executive debriefs. Enhanced with our diagnostic library to size each finding and an EBITDA bridge with a gate applied to every lever.
Result: The incoming CFO started with a preliminary assessment and an early roadmap of executable improvements, key-person risks and quantified cost savings, in hand before the first day.

Cost-savings targets by function: procurement, logistics, finance, G&A and HR.

Value Capture · Strategic diagnostic · Specialty and commodity manufacturer

Portfolio prioritization across three business units and ten end markets

Situation: A manufacturer of roughly $1bn in revenue operated three business units across about ten end markets. Profitability varied widely by unit and segment, yet internal reporting could not distinguish where the company earned its margin through limited competition and where through efficient production. Capital allocation and pricing decisions were being argued rather than evidenced.
What we did: We rebuilt the profitability picture from the bottom up: a clean baseline by business unit and end segment, margin separated from EBITDA by unit, and profitability restated per unit of plant capacity. We sized the external profit pool by product and end market, incorporated volumes and measured the client's economics against the market. We then mapped every sub-market on market attractiveness and macroeconomic and cyclical conditions.
Method: Profit-pool sizing, capacity-normalized unit economics, market-structure and specialty segmentation, relative competitive benchmarking, share-of-profit-pool measurement and portfolio mapping.
Result: The capacity-normalized view surfaced repricing and production-reallocation opportunities, sized by segment, and isolated the segments where the client out-earned the market and held defensible share, which became the candidates for incremental capacity.

Questions

Answers to the questions we are asked first.

What does Alio Foundry do?

Alio Foundry is a specialist advisory firm in Chicago. We work across two practices, Value Capture and M&A Transaction Services, for public, private and sponsor-backed companies.

Who does Alio Foundry work with?

Public, private and sponsor-backed companies in industrials, manufacturing, aerospace and defense, consumer goods, technology, and business and professional services, typically between $50m and $1bn in revenue. We also partner with privately owned companies, corporate development teams and executive teams to support special projects.

How does an engagement start?

An engagement starts when you bring us a real case or a hypothetical, and we respond with a proposed engagement model, scope and proof-of-concept examples: what we need, what we build, and what you keep. Every engagement begins with a baseline model of your business built from your records and external data.

What does Alio Foundry deliver?

We partner with organizations and leaders to accelerate execution and the realization of value and program objectives. We do this with unparalleled commitment to research, analysis and proven methodologies leading to execution. Deliverables are working models, roadmaps and execution plans supported by evidence, research and benchmarks, and they stay with your leaders after the engagement ends.

Does Alio Foundry only support M&A and Value Capture?

No. We take on additional or specific scopes of work we are able to support. These have included discrete strategy and diligence reviews, cost-out modeling, project management, transformation programs and bespoke projects. Please reach out to one of our team members for additional information.

Does Alio Foundry take contingent or referral fees?

No. We do not audit, resell software or accept referral or contingent fees, and we are not a broker-dealer or investment adviser.

Where is Alio Foundry based?

Willis Tower, 233 S Wacker Drive, 44th Floor, Chicago, Illinois. Contact: humans@aliofoundry.com.

Contact

One conversation to define the question.

Email a question, or to set up a time to talk.

humans@aliofoundry.com

Willis Tower, 233 S Wacker Drive, 44th Floor, Chicago