Integration work that held up under pressure

The challenge

Each deal only made sense if customers moved onto an existing platform and the acquired product was retired. Customers were contractually committed to migrate, but there was no proven playbook, tooling or capacity model to start from, and the first target was a distressed business.

What we did

• Amended customer contracts to permit migration, and made supplier contract assignment a condition of closing, before the deal signed.
• Stopped selling the acquired platform on Day 1 and put the team under one dedicated director.
• Built the data migration tooling and ranked customers by contract expiry and churn risk.
• Used deal one's actual spend, tooling and organization model to budget deal two, then ran deal three with a single program manager and weekly planning.
• Started the migration forecast a few months after close instead of on Day 1, a more realistic assumption that became standard.

The challenge

The business still relied on its former parent for IT, security, e-commerce, corporate systems and payroll for several entities. Every dependency had to be documented, priced and agreed in a transition services agreement, and a reverse agreement, within weeks of signing. The dealers that followed brought their own systems, private-label products, lower pay scales and consent and compliance gaps.

What we did

• Ran the Day 1 tracker across legal, finance, HR, IT and real estate, with weekly escalations on the agreements, indemnities, licences and insurance.
• Moved the contact centre agreement into the transition services agreement and built the payroll and benefits agreement running the other way.
• Ran diligence on the dealers: the request list, the data room, weekly calls with counsel, and reports that flagged liens, lease consents, pay equity and accessibility gaps, plus about $340K to move staff onto the acquirer's pay bands.
• Set up the Integration Management Office with guiding principles, stream leads, weekly dashboards, and Day 1 communications for staff, customers and vendors.
• Sequenced customer migrations province by province, and converted one fulfilment centre while consolidating another into it.

The challenge

One of the companies still depended on its former parent, under a transition services agreement, for leadership, HR, phones, call centre, unified communications and fibre, at a cost of roughly $0.8M a year. Every service had to be replaced while three companies moved onto one scorecard, one set of contracts, one real estate footprint and one support model.

What we did

• Ran a combined steering team and a 90 day priority plan for each company.
• Tracked every transition service to exit, with a named owner and a date.
• Recruited a controller, an HR business partner and a telecom analyst to replace services the former owner had provided.
• Bought fibre, built a 10G line, and migrated unified communications users and pilot customers off the former parent.
• Consolidated real estate across three cities, set up a common HR support structure, and commissioned security scans of the acquired applications with funding to fix and re-scan them.