Areas of Practice

Each practice area draws on 20+ years of hands-on operating experience across PE-backed industrial, manufacturing, electronics, and technology-enabled businesses. I bring the same frameworks and discipline to advisory engagements that I apply as a full-time operating executive.

Operational Excellence

I apply Lean, Six Sigma, and Design of Experiment (DoE) methodologies to drive measurable improvement in margin, throughput, and cost structure. This isn't theoretical — it's rooted in leading manufacturing operations across the U.S. and Europe, reducing footprints, improving yield, and installing KPI-driven operating cadences.

Representative results include 40.4% improvement in revenue per employee, 3.6% gross margin expansion, and 26.8% inventory reduction — all achieved within 18 months at Davlyn Group.

Applied AI

I deploy AI as a practical management tool — not a technology experiment. In PE-backed and founder-led environments, I've led initiatives that improve operating leverage, customer responsiveness, and decision quality without adding headcount or complexity.

Examples include AI-enabled commercial workflow automation using ChatGPT, Zapier, and HubSpot; agentic AI solutions for lawsuit classification, call scripting, and content generation; and AI-powered customer engagement tools that improve responsiveness without incremental staff.

For more on my AI approach, visit robertgatta.com/applied-ai.

Turnaround

I've been brought in by PE sponsors and boards to stabilize and turn around underperforming portfolio companies — diagnosing problems quickly, stopping cash bleed, resetting cost structures, and rebuilding leadership teams around clear priorities and accountability.

My turnaround playbook covers rapid financial and operational assessment, cash and working capital stabilization, structural and footprint optimization, commercial repositioning, and stakeholder communication. For the full framework, visit robertgatta.com/first-90-days.

Business Integration

I lead post-acquisition integration across multi-site operations, aligning systems, teams, culture, and commercial strategy. This includes cross-border integrations, competitor acquisitions, and bolt-on platform builds.

My integration framework covers strategic due diligence validation, financial modeling and synergy tracking, governance and leadership structure, cultural alignment using the Competing Values Framework, and operational/systems integration.

Exit and Sale Preparation

I position portfolio companies for successful exits by strengthening financial performance, building the equity story, and preparing management teams and data rooms for buyer diligence. My experience includes preparing companies for sale processes that resulted in offers at up to 9.6x EBITDA.