Is my business data ready to sell? Readiness calculator
Getting company data ready for a buyer means legal review, redaction, exporting, tidying formats and documenting where everything came from, and most companies are partway through some of it. Set how far along you are on each and how much data you hold, and the calculator gives you a weighted readiness score out of 100. It also estimates the hours, cost and calendar weeks needed to finish, so you can budget the work before talking to buyers.
Score by area
Points earned out of each area's weight, and the points still open.
| Area | Where you are | Weight | Points | Points open | Work left |
|---|
How the score and the effort are calculated
The score weights each area by how much buyers care about it. The effort estimate uses typical hours for each kind of preparation work, scaled by what is still left to do.
Score each area
Legal review 20, redaction 20, exportable systems 15, documentation 15, formats 10, English 10 (full points at 70 percent or more) and history 10 (full points at three years).
score = Σ weight × progress
Estimate export work
About 12 hours per system to set up, test and repeat an export, for the systems not yet exportable plus a baseline for each one.
Estimate redaction and formatting
Six hours of tooling and review per million records still to redact, three per million still to reformat, plus $400 per million for redaction software.
redaction hours = 6 × records × (1 − redacted)
Estimate documentation and legal
Six hours per undocumented system. Legal review takes about 25 lawyer hours from scratch, or 10 if it is in progress.
Convert to cost and time
Internal hours times your hourly cost, lawyer hours times the lawyer rate, and internal hours divided by your weekly capacity for the calendar time.
Questions about data sale readiness
What readiness score do I need before approaching a buyer?
Around 70 is enough to start conversations, as long as the legal review has at least started. Buyers expect some preparation to happen during the deal. Below 50, it is usually better to fix the biggest gaps first so the first sample you send makes a good impression.
What costs the most when preparing data for sale?
Redaction, in most companies. Removing names, contact details and other personal data from millions of emails, chats and tickets takes automated tools plus human review. Legal review is the second biggest cost, but it is fixed rather than growing with data volume.
Can I prepare the data myself?
Much of it, yes: exporting from your systems, organizing folders, writing a short description of each dataset and running redaction tools. Legal review should be done by a lawyer, and a second pair of eyes on redacted samples is worth paying for.
How long does it take to get company data ready to sell?
From a few weeks to a few months. The calculator divides the total hours by the time your team can spend each week. Larger data volumes mostly add redaction time; more source systems mostly add export and documentation time.
How is this different from the readiness checker?
The checker on this site asks yes or no questions and gives a verdict with a list of blockers. This calculator works in percentages, scores how far along you are, and estimates the effort and money needed to finish.