Private equity has poured billions into collision repair over the past five years. Caliber, Crash Champions, Classic Collision, Quality Collision Group—the list of PE-backed MSOs keeps growing.
If you're running one of these platforms, you already know: sponsors don't just want financial statements. They want operational visibility.
And most management teams are struggling to deliver it.
What Sponsors Actually Ask For
After working with PE-backed MSOs, here's what comes up in every board meeting:
1. Same-Store Performance Trends
The question: "How are our existing shops performing month-over-month?"
Sponsors want to separate organic performance from acquisition-driven growth. If you added 20 shops this year, did the original 40 get better or worse?
What you need:
- Cycle time trends by shop (not just network average)
- Revenue per shop over time
- GP margin by shop over time
- Same-store sales growth calculation
The problem: CCC doesn't make same-store analysis easy. You're left exporting data and building Excel models manually.
2. Acquisition Integration Tracking
The question: "How quickly are acquired shops getting to target performance?"
Every acquired shop should improve post-integration. Sponsors want to see the curve—and they want to know if a shop is lagging.
What you need:
- Pre-acquisition baseline metrics for each shop
- Month-by-month improvement tracking
- Time-to-target calculations
- Outliers flagged automatically
3. Operational Outliers
The question: "Which shops need attention?"
Sponsors hate surprises. They want to know about the struggling shops before they become a board-level discussion.
4. EBITDA Bridge
The question: "Walk me through the EBITDA change from last quarter."
This is Finance 101 for PE. They want to understand what's driving profitability changes: volume, price, mix, cost structure.
5. Capacity and Throughput
The question: "How much room do we have to grow in existing shops?"
Before approving CapEx for new bays or new locations, sponsors want to know if you're maximizing what you have.
The Board Meeting Problem
Here's what typically happens before a board meeting at a PE-backed MSO:
Week before the meeting:
- Ops team starts pulling CCC reports
- Each report takes 5-10 minutes
- Data goes into Excel for formatting
- Finance adds their layer
- Someone builds the PowerPoint
Day before the meeting:
- Numbers don't tie
- Someone re-pulls reports
- Last-minute updates
- Scramble to finish the deck
The meeting:
- Sponsor asks a question not covered in the deck
- Management says "we'll get back to you"
- Sponsor notes the visibility gap
- Repeat next quarter
This cycle wastes hundreds of hours per year. And it leaves management unable to answer questions in real-time.
What Good Looks Like
The MSOs that impress their sponsors have a different workflow:
Always-on dashboards:
- Every operational KPI visible in real-time
- No report-pulling required
- Anyone can access, anytime
Self-service analytics:
- Sponsors can log in and explore
- Drill down by shop, region, time period
- No waiting for someone to run a report
Exception-based management:
- Alerts when shops cross thresholds
- Management knows about problems first
- Sponsors see proactive action, not reactive excuses
The Trust Factor
Here's what sponsors don't say out loud: they're evaluating management's operational sophistication.
A management team that shows up with real-time dashboards and proactive analysis signals competence. A team that's scrambling for data signals risk.
This matters for:
- Follow-on investment: Will the sponsor fund the next acquisition?
- Management credibility: Does leadership know what's happening in the business?
- Exit valuation: Buyers pay more for well-instrumented businesses
The data infrastructure you build isn't just for operations—it's a signal to capital providers.