For Private Equity

We find the EBITDA hiding in your portfolio’s OPEX.

Telecom, technology, and utility is the line no one in a portfolio company owns. It falls between Finance and IT at every business you buy. Acquire ten companies, ignore it for 18 months, and the OPEX you could have returned to EBITDA is simply gone.

29% average first-year savings. Your savings beat our fees in year one. Guaranteed.

OPEX removed is value created

Recurring OPEX removed (annual)

$1.0M

At a 10x EBITDA multiple

10×

Enterprise value at exit $10M

For illustration. Varies by sector and multiple.

Is this you?

When TruNorth earns its place on the deal team

The wedge is almost always a transaction. Any of these means there is OPEX to find.

The whole deal lifecycle

We fit before, during, and after the deal.

Pre-acquisition

Diligence audit

Under NDA, we validate the target’s real run-rate before you sign. Is this site spending twice the norm? Does the deal still pencil?

Post-close

Standardize fast

We run the same repeatable playbook at each portfolio company inside the 100-day plan, and take over bill-pay so nothing gets cut mid-integration.

Exit prep

Bank the value

We clean the OPEX before a buyer’s diligence surfaces it, so the savings show up as enterprise value at your multiple.

What TruNorth does

Three services, across the whole portfolio.

One team running technology expense management, sourcing, and bill pay at every portfolio company, so the OPEX line no one owns finally has an owner.

Technology Expense Management

Lifecycle management for every telecom and utility asset and expense at each portfolio company, from diligence inventory to disconnect.

Sourcing & Procurement

Sourcing and procurement priced against your true portfolio scale, with contract-expiry control across every company.

Bill Pay

Bill pay as agent of record during integration, so nothing gets cut mid-transition and savings never leak back.

The TruNorth 5D Method as a continuous cycle: Discover, Decide, Disconnect, Discount, and Defend looping around the TruNorth sparrow.
TruNorth's proven process

We run the whole process on your behalf.

Five phases, run as a cycle. The load sits with us, so your team barely lifts a finger.

  1. 1

    Discover

    We pull every bill, account, and carrier portal into one plain-English inventory.

    You: Hand us a list of accounts. That’s it.

  2. 2

    Decide

    A TruNorth analyst reviews every line with the people closest to the spend, asking whether it is still in use.

    You: Confirm what you actually need.

  3. 3

    Disconnect

    We cancel what no one uses and make sure nothing dependent gets cut.

    You: Nothing. We execute it.

  4. 4

    Discount

    We renegotiate what remains with your true buying power across every location.

    You: Nothing. We negotiate.

  5. 5

    Defend

    We pay the bills on time and re-audit every year so savings never bleed back.

    You: Centralize new service requests and approvals through us.

Why software alone leaves money on the table

Your TEM software reports what you have. It never asks what you use.

Tangoe and Calero are excellent software. However, TruNorth is equal parts people and software, and people are accountable. When we inherit those inventories, the savings are still sitting there, because no one did the deep dive into what is actually used. About 70% of what we recover comes from disconnecting services nobody was using, exactly what a software-only inventory never catches.

The engagement is light on your operators. We take a file dump of the accounts, build the inventory, then walk the site teams through what they have. We remove work, we do not add it.

$6M

Found at a single public company in one year. The CEO called to ask what they were doing wrong. The honest answer was nothing. This category is genuinely hard, and the carriers count on that. We are here to fix it.

Our deepest named proof is broadcast, roughly $42M in aggregate savings across complex, M&A-built portfolios. The year-one ROI guarantee means you carry none of the risk.

The instrument behind the audit

Every portfolio company on one screen.

Sparrow is the single source of truth your deal team and operators share. Charges by vendor, open tickets, and savings to date, sliceable by company, so the audit trail survives diligence.

The Sparrow dashboard on one screen: current charges by vendor across telecom and energy providers, open tickets by type with estimated savings, and a savings-to-date summary chart.
The real Sparrow dashboard. Charges by vendor, open tickets, and savings to date, by portfolio company. Sample account; tap to view full size.
“Their team helped us gain immediate visibility, reduce spend, and set up long-term controls. Their ability to navigate our complexity and execute fast has been a game-changer.”
CTO, Nationwide Broadcaster $7.4M recovered over 3 years
Calculate your Phantom Tax

How much are you leaking?

Most multi-location enterprises overpay 15 to 22% on fragmented telecom spend. Answer four questions and we'll estimate your hidden spend, then send you our most relevant forensic case study.

  • Free · 60 seconds · no sales pitch
  • Your number, based on your spend & locations
  • Get the forensic case study instantly

Put a number on a portfolio company, or a live target.

Run the 60-second Phantom Tax check, or get TruNorth on your diligence vendor list. Recurring OPEX removed is enterprise value at exit.