Merging two companies to realize $75 million in synergies

What We Did

Two private equity-backed organizations agreed to merge, creating a national company that offers facility, security, janitorial, and staffing services. This merger of equals was ripe for significant operational synergies, meaning rapid integration was key. We answered the call—first, by providing merger diligence for the deal’s private equity investors that set the stage for integration, and then by providing leadership for migrating all operations onto a single technology platform.

Our team:

• Defined the technology operating model that would support all business functions and operations
• Oversaw development of IT systems to meet the combined company’s needs
• Planned and then executed the migration in four waves
• Identified and led several strategic follow-on initiatives to further drive scale and efficiency

The Opportunity

Two companies with private equity investors merged to create greater economies of scale and to establish a more dominant market position in the United States, where each company historically had different geographic strengths. Delivering on the merger’s substantial synergies required the companies to quickly integrate their operations on a single technology platform. That’s where we came in.

Our transaction advisory expertise brought us to the table, as the private equity investors sought insight into the risks and opportunities of combining organizations. And then our experience leading merger integration projects paved the path to value creation.

An Undeniable Approach

It takes an exceptional and cooperative team to orchestrate a transformation of this magnitude, at this pace. We built a multidisciplinary group of merger experts, technologists, and business process specialists to design the integration strategy—and then executed it on time and within budget. Our team quickly became an integral leader of the company’s integration effort, contributing expertise and leadership for strategic technology decisions, along with hands-on operational experience to drive swift migration.

From start to finish, we led the way toward turning technology into tangible business value:

• Creating the plan to integrate both organizations on a single platform of applications and shared infrastructure
• Validating that the core technology, supported by a niche provider, could scale to meet the needs of the combined business
• Migrating both organizations’ operations to new IT processes and applications – in four waves
• Designing a new, combined IT team organization
• Leading negotiations with several key IT providers to achieve beneficial pricing and terms
• Developing and deploying training to all 150 offices and 160,000 employees

Once the migration was complete, our aptitude for optimization and value creation kicked in. We extended the impact by:

• Developing a three-year digital roadmap for optimizing the new IT environment
• Piloting a new digital time-entry capture process that delivers significant cost savings
• Creating a new process and corresponding technology toolkit for recruiting, hiring, and onboarding 80,000 employees annually

Returns You Can Measure

We didn’t just meet the project’s tight timeline for integrating two companies onto one IT platform. We executed the migration within the defined budget, positioning the newly merged company to achieve its target of $75 million in synergies. In particular, the new IT operating platform is saving the company $5 million annually, including $2.5 million in annual savings achieved by facilitating licensing negotiations with the primary application provider.

The project, our first for this specific private equity firm, led to a number of other significant initiatives with the private equity investor and its portfolio companies—much of that work in post-close value creation.