Mergers and Divestitures Can Present Many Opportunities
CoffeeTree Group’s Trusted Advisors have worked on a number of global mergers and divestitures. The most successful mergers and divestitures often have similar attributes. Common attributes consist of finding synergies to cut costs and optimize staff, thereby reducing costs and rightsizing the organization to align with business objectives.
Multi-supplier arrangements require coordinated service delivery, a governance team to oversee suppliers to ensure effective communication that will provide seamless IT services. The primary focus needs to be on the end-customer (internal and/or external) to ensure standardized processes, procedures and protocols are established across all suppliers. A typical telephony / network agreement is signed for multiple years and requires well thought out SLAs, SLOs and KPIs to measure overall supplier performance. CoffeeTree Group’s Trusted Advisors have been successful in renegotiating these types of agreements with some of the largest third-party suppliers in the world.
The contractual obligations to third parties and preventing loss of data are usually the most complex pieces of the puzzle. For example, a third party may offer a service wherein your company’s data is placed in their proprietary solution and becomes the third party’s data. A company might pay for the third party to export the data into a format they could use. Companies have seen data formatted into a supplier’s proprietary solution and then be translated into a source format that made the data unrecognizable to the original host or company. In at least two instances, the third party refused to return the data to the company. This type of situation can result in significant data loss and tremendous overhead for the company. Worse yet, it can become a legal or financial battle. However, working with an experienced Advisory Team like ours will make these overwhelming events and third-party threats manageable because we have overcome these types of challenges in in the past.
In most cases, mergers and divestitures provide a significant opportunity for cost restructuring, innovation, and technology advancement. Significant transformational disruption often provides an opening to introduce new ways of doing work, new products, or services to be delivered, and new ways to structure more favorable cost elements. This type of transformation is often too tasking on the organization during normal business operations, requiring significant cultural change to support, and funding which may otherwise be unavailable can more easily take place during a merger or divestiture.
The opportunity could be moving from on-premise email to O365 in the cloud. Or a business may find that it is in their best interest to terminate an existing agreement that was unfavorable or is now more costly based on the change in its organizational model. A business may be unable to align the supplier or contract with the new business model. In some cases, service value leakage has been hindering the company for some time and can be resolved. In other cases, it is an opportunity to restructure services to take advantage of volume discounts, longer-term solutions or services that better align with your three-year business roadmap.
CoffeeTree Group’s Trusted Advisors provide tremendous value by restructuring the customer-facing user experience (UX) while increasing optimization and efficiency for a company. This allows the company to strengthen its core business even after the triggering event is complete. Such improvements could include disaster recovery, business continuity, server / application rationalization and migration to the cloud services. This leads to changes in organizational structure, such as the ratio between full-time employees versus contractors, or buying some services instead of producing them in-house.
Call and speak with an experienced advisor at CoffeeTree Group now. We can explain the ways we can improve your overall business during an event often considered otherwise disruptive.
CoffeeTree Group (CTG) has critical program experience in strategies and solutions for clients planning divestitures or mergers, or who have undergone other changes. Leverage our key knowledge – we can help you get there. Let us help you drive innovation, lower risks and get results.
Need assistance? Let’s discuss your challenges: Call today at 248-526-3315 or email us value@coffeetreegroup.com for an immediate consultation.