Playbook
EBITDA Defense
A sponsor-facing framework for protecting margin during a platform consolidation, without freezing the roadmap or gutting engineering capacity.
Why margin erodes during convergence
Every platform convergence effort carries a hidden cost curve: duplicate infrastructure runs in parallel with the new shared layer, product teams maintain two integration surfaces, and support load spikes as customers migrate. Left unmanaged, this shows up directly in EBITDA before it shows up anywhere else.
The defense sequence
- Freeze the blast radius. Identify every cost center touched by the convergence before work begins, not after the first budget review.
- Sunset on a fixed clock. Attach an explicit decommission date to every legacy system kept alive during migration — open-ended parallel-run is the single largest margin leak.
- Instrument cost per shared service. Make infrastructure spend attributable to the platform layer, not buried inside individual product P&Ls.
- Report the defense, not just the build. Sponsors underwrite discipline. A monthly view of cost avoided is as valuable as a view of features shipped.
What sponsors actually check
Diligence teams look for one thing above all: whether cost decisions during a technical transition were made deliberately or reactively. A documented defense sequence, run consistently across every planning cycle, is the evidence they're looking for.