Many consulting companies are now offering Integrated Due Diligence that emcompasses all DD workstreams under 1 roof. What are the benefits and shortcomings of this service vs. assembling a small team of specialist DD service provider for eg. seperate experts for FDD, Tax DD, CDD, Operations DD, IT DD, HR DD …?
I think the benefits of having a single source for integrated DD is probably similar to using a single entity for any consolidation – you only have one relationship to manage, there may be a benefit of some economy of scale since you’re not paying for redundancy for back-office type functions, and it may be faster to get up and running and working since you only have to negotiate one agreement. You would also run into some of the same downsides – you wouldn’t be able to pick the specialists for a certain area, so there is potential that you may not have the best-of-the-best in a given field, and you are putting all of your eggs in one basket which could be problematic if difficulties pop up in one area.