Tracking position as at November 8, 2024 — thirteen months after Day 1, five weeks past the original TSA exit date and seven weeks before the revised one. Two numbers are reported here and they point in different directions. Both are true. Reporting only the flattering one is the most available way to mislead a steering committee, and this page exists to prevent it.
Contents
1. The two measures
Run-rate is the annualized effect of everything delivered to date. Cumulative capture is what has actually been banked since close. A program can be on plan against the first and behind against the second at the same time, and this one is.
Run-rate is a statement about the future; cumulative capture is a statement about the past, and only one of them can be recovered. If a synergy lands three months late, the run-rate catches up completely — by Year 3 the annualized number is identical to the model. The three months of savings that were never banked are gone permanently. They cannot be earned back by the same synergy performing well later, because the run-rate curve only ever shifts right; it does not rise above target to compensate. A tracker that reports run-rate alone will show a program hitting its deal case while the cash position quietly diverges, and nothing in the reporting will ever close that gap.
2. Run-rate by source
| Synergy source | Year 3 target | Run-rate at this date | % | What gates the remainder |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform & IT consolidation | $24,000,000 | $21,120,000 | 88% | Final decommissioning follows TSA exit |
| Provider network rationalization | $19,000,000 | $11,970,000 | 63% | Contract anniversaries; phase 2 deferred under CR-007 |
| Vendor & contract consolidation | $18,000,000 | $18,000,000 | 100% | Complete — landed first, as modeled |
| Corporate function consolidation | $16,000,000 | $15,040,000 | 94% | Residual TSA-provided functions |
| Facilities & other | $8,000,000 | $7,200,000 | 90% | Lease terms |
| Total | $85,000,000 | $73,330,000 | 86% | — |
The order of this table is the argument. Vendor and contract consolidation is complete, and it finished first because it is contract work rather than technical work — change-of-control clauses, terminations and renegotiations land in months while the platform tracks are still planning. Provider network is lowest not because the workstream is underperforming but because it is gated by contract anniversaries nobody controls. Reading down this column tells you which synergies a program can accelerate and which it can only wait for, and that distinction matters more when deciding where to put pressure than the percentages do.
3. Why cumulative capture is behind
Three mechanisms account for the gap, and none of them is a delivery failure.
The TSA extension. Platform and IT consolidation savings begin when the transitional services stop being paid for. Extending the TSA by thirteen weeks means thirteen weeks of duplicate running cost that the model had assumed would already have stopped. Those months are the largest single component of the shortfall and they were a deliberate purchase — the extension protected member-facing continuity, which the charter ranks above cost.
Claims run-out on renegotiated provider rates. A rate takes effect when it is signed and produces savings when claims incurred under it are adjudicated and paid, which lags by two to four months for professional claims and longer for facility claims. Every contract signed late in a quarter contributes almost nothing to that quarter.
Deferred scope. Two items were removed from the program and their contribution left the model with them; that is treated separately in section 4 because it is a different kind of gap.
The shortfall is reported against the model, not against the target — and the distinction is easy to lose. The Year 3 run-rate target is still forecast to be met. What is behind is the path: the cumulative curve sits below where the deal model said it would be at this point, and the difference is a real cash number that no future period recovers. Saying "synergies are on track" is accurate about the target and misleading about the cash, and a reader who hears it will not think to ask which one was meant. Both figures appear on every report to Steering for that reason.
4. What the deferred scope did to this page
Two change requests deferred scope to a Year 2 backlog: provider network rationalization phase 2, owned by J. Kirkendall, and the care management advanced analytics module, owned by Dr. M. Ellsworth. Neither was canceled and neither was delivered.
The deferred value stays visible on this tracker rather than being removed from the denominator. Dropping it would make the remaining percentages rise and the program look better for having done less.
A deferred synergy has a named owner and a backlog entry, which is more than most deferred scope gets — and it is still the item most likely to quietly not happen. The program that deferred it closes; the backlog transfers to a receiving organization that did not make the commitment and has its own priorities. The honest position at this date is that the value is retrievable and nobody has yet accepted responsibility for retrieving it, which is why it is carried here as an open item rather than as a footnote to the total.
5. Handover of benefits tracking
The program closes before the benefits fully land — a Year 3 target cannot be verified by a program that ends in Year 2. Tracking transfers at program close to the VP Financial Planning & Analysis at ACME Health under the Benefits Realization Plan, with the run-rate and cumulative measures carried forward unchanged so the receiving owner inherits a series rather than a summary.
Three things transfer with it: the per-source decomposition above, the two deferred items with their owners, and the standing requirement that both measures are reported rather than one. That last is the one most likely to be dropped after handover, because it is the one that makes the reporting less comfortable.
Related artifacts: 13 — Synergy Realization Plan · 37 — Provider Network Rationalization · 44 — Change Control Log · 40 — Integration Dashboard