By: Shawn Evans, CEO & Founder
From Shawn: Most platforms take a year to go live. That’s a problem if you’re trying to grow or meet any kind of timeline tied to revenue or valuation. That’s exactly why we built IPS around a 90-day implementation model.
Speed Is Now a Business Metric
Platform evaluations still center on features. However, for TPAs, ASOs, and networks, especially those backed by private equity, the real question is no longer what a system can do, but how quickly it can start delivering value.
Implementation timelines now influence revenue timing, growth potential, and, ultimately, valuation. What used to be an operational detail is now a strategic decision, one that depends on the underlying infrastructure supporting the platform.
The Cost of Waiting vs. The Value of Speed
A 12–18-month implementation doesn’t just delay a project; it holds the business in place. During that time, revenue is deferred, growth initiatives stall, and legacy inefficiencies continue to compound. For investor-backed organizations, this creates a compressed window to scale before exit. In practical terms, companies can spend a significant portion of their growth cycle simply trying to get live.
A 90–day implementation fundamentally changes that equation.
Instead of waiting over a year to realize value, organizations begin operating and learning within a single quarter. That earlier start creates momentum: revenue begins sooner, operational gaps are identified faster, and scaling becomes possible much earlier in the lifecycle. In this context, speed is what creates acceleration.
How IPS Delivers in 90 Days
While most assume that speed comes from cutting corners, the reality is it comes from structure and clarity at each stage of implementation, supported by a platform designed specifically for rapid deployment and scalability, as outlined in the IPS implementation approach .
30 Days: Discovery
The process starts by getting underneath the surface. We look beyond what the client thinks their workflows are, reviewing how they function day to day. That means digging into process gaps, data quality issues, and the operational realities that tend to get overlooked, because those are the things that slow implementations down later.
60 Days: Configuration
Once that foundation is clear, the platform is configured to match the business, not rebuilt from scratch. This is where plans take shape, integrations come online, and workflows begin to reflect how the organization operates. The goal isn’t complexity, it’s alignment.
90 Days: Go-Live
The final phase is about confidence. Testing is grounded in real scenarios instead of theoretical ones, and support stays hands-on through the transition. By the time the system goes live, it’s already functioning as part of the business, not just something teams are still figuring out.
Why This Shows Up in Valuation Conversations
Implementation timelines are incredibly relevant for operations, but they show up in investor conversations as well. When a platform takes 12–18 months or longer to become operational, it limits how quickly a TPA can scale. That compresses the time available to demonstrate growth before exit. A faster implementation changes that dynamic. From an investor perspective, speed directly impacts:
- Time to Revenue: How quickly the business starts generating returns
- Operational Readiness: How fast the platform can support growth
- Scalability Window: How much time is left to expand before exit
- Overall Valuation: How much progress can be demonstrated within the hold period
This is why implementation speed has evolved to be more than a delivery metric. It plays a larger role in how the business is evaluated.
Speed Is the Shift and IPS Is Built Around It
Legacy platforms weren’t built for this kind of velocity. Many still rely on extended timelines, heavy customization, and external dependencies that slow progress before a client ever sees value. That model is starting to break.
Flexibility, speed, and continuous support are now baseline expectations. As those expectations shift, the gap between platforms is more than features; it’s about how quickly those features translate into real outcomes.
That’s where IPS was built differently.
We view implementation timelines as a lever to accelerate the business instead of a constraint in which to manage. The ability to go live in 90 days goes beyond faster delivery, helping to change when growth starts, and how quickly it compounds.
