The 90-Day IT Playbook for Newly PE-Backed Companies

Day 0 to Day 30: Stabilize and Assess

Whether your company is operating under a Transition Service Agreement (TSA) or racing to disentangle from a parent entity, the first 30 days are critical for setting expectations and minimizing disruption. This phase is about building visibility, reducing risk, and creating the conditions for fast integration.

In these early weeks, teams often uncover issues that were invisible during diligence. For example, during a recent onboarding for a multi-site manufacturer, our team found that their legacy backup system was still tied to a third-party vendor, and no disaster recovery plan existed. By migrating to a standardized backup solution and documenting all credentials in week one, we eliminated a major compliance risk and prevented what could have been a business-halting data loss incident.

Insights like these quickly shape your priorities. The first month should focus on understanding systems, pinpointing vulnerabilities, and establishing clear accountability between internal IT leadership and external partners. Key steps include:

• Clarify roles and responsibilities. Ownership is often murky during a transition. Defining who owns what, internally and across partners, to reduce confusion, accelerates decision-making, ensures board visibility, and prevents IT gaps that slow integration velocity.
• Map out inherited architecture. Documenting systems, licenses, integrations, and known vulnerabilities gives leadership a clear picture of what they’ve acquired, enabling smarter investment decisions and faster prioritization of high-impact fixes.
• Review the TSA terms. Understanding what support continues, what access ends, and when it ends helps prevent sudden outages and allows you to plan a smooth, disruption-free exit from parent-provided services.
• Assess your risk areas. Identifying vulnerabilities in data access, security controls, and operational uptime allows teams to mitigate risks early—protecting continuity and reducing the chance of costly incidents.
• Establish a stabilization plan. Even if long-term modernization is the goal, you need a short-term blueprint that ensures operational stability, minimizes downtime, and creates a foundation for future improvements without derailing day-to-day performance.

This outcomes-first approach helps keep critical systems online, reduces transition risk, and gives leadership the clarity needed for the deeper assessments that follow.

Day 31–60: Align Strategy and Prioritize Action

With the initial audit complete and key risks stabilized, the second month is about translating findings into a clear, actionable plan. This is the phase where IT leadership proves its ability to think long-term and move with urgency.

As teams begin shaping their integration roadmap, issues around ownership and access often rise to the surface. During a recent MSP transition, for example, the outgoing IT provider had never transferred administrator rights for several cloud services. Identifying and securing global admin access before their contract ended prevented the client from losing control of critical systems—a gap that could have resulted in weeks of downtime and expensive emergency remediation.

Key priorities during this window often include:

• Drafting an integration roadmap. This document ties systems and processes back to business outcomes. It should clearly outline which tools stay, which go, and how systems will scale.
• Establishing financial visibility. Break out CapEx versus OpEx, identify waste, and begin forecasting IT spend in alignment with board expectations.
• Addressing compliance and cybersecurity gaps. Issues identified in the assessment phase, especially those related to sensitive data or regulatory exposure, must move from discovery to remediation.
• Standardizing systems and processes. Whether you’re inheriting multiple entities or navigating a carve-out, now’s the time to reduce complexity. Start by aligning policies, access protocols, and infrastructure baselines.
• Defining internal vs. external responsibilities. As you transition away from the TSA (if applicable), clarify who owns execution across IT functions.

By the end of this phase, leadership should feel confident that there’s a plan in place to keep the business moving forward.

Day 61–90: Execute and Show Progress

With priorities set and leadership aligned, the third month is where momentum becomes visible. Now is the time to prove the right work is in motion and that measurable progress is being made.

Here’s what execution looks like during this window:

• Kick off high-impact projects. Focus on initiatives tied to business continuity, cybersecurity, compliance, or system integration. These are often the areas where value can erode if ignored.
• Implement early wins. Deliver something tangible: a new security framework, decommissioned legacy systems, or a functioning reporting dashboard. These milestones earn credibility and trust.
• Refine KPI tracking. What gets measured gets funded. Ensure reporting mechanisms are in place to track project velocity, risk reduction, and cost alignment. Aim to focus on clarity and outcome in your reporting.
• Support internal teams. If you’re replacing TSA support or shifting roles, make sure knowledge transfer is happening in parallel. Stability matters as much as speed.

This phase should close with the organization in motion. Leadership should be seeing traction, and internal teams should be aligned around a roadmap they understand and believe in.

The First 90 Days Set the Tone 

Your first 90 days will shape your next 900. IT is the lever that determines whether your investment thesis accelerates or stalls. 

Whether you’re navigating a carve-out, replacing TSA support, or just trying to get a handle on what you inherited, it helps to have the right structure and perspective in place. As a managed IT service provider with deep experience supporting PE-backed companies, Lazorpoint understands how to balance speed with strategy.

Talk to an IT Strategist today to assess your readiness and ensure your infrastructure is prepared to support PE-backed growth.