TiG had already grown by acquiring two Managed IT Services businesses. Then it acquired ThirdSpace, a specialist consulting business, specialising in Microsoft Identity and Security solutions and soon after Mobliciti, a mobile solutions and security and managed networks business.

My challenge as Director of Integration was to integrate each of the underlying businesses into a single coherent and effective business – Kocho.

Each business had it’s own platform, solutions, processes and ways of working – all different from each other. Some of these were documented but most were not.

My task was to take the best parts of each business and ensure that the sum of all the parts was so much more than any of the contributing businesses. Most importantly I needed to ensure that we create a new single culture and ways of working for everyone in the business – to get away from the ‘us’ and ‘them’ culture that inevitably forms during mergers and acquisitions.

I worked with the Exec team (initially made up of Exec members / leaders from all the acquired companies) to define “who we are” as a newly combined company and the business strategy for the next few years.

I worked with the Marketing and People teams to define the new Kocho brand and Business Values.

I worked with all parts of the Business to define a multi-workstream programme and acted as overall Programme Manager to integrate the business:

• Business Strategy – defining the strategy that would guide and inform all other workstreams
• Business Process and Systems – working across business areas to identify cross-business processes and systems that required definition / standardisation
  • Including consolidating five M365 tenants to one.
  • Including creation of a single centralised Intranet and Comms approach to ensure that business operations / governance & security / HR / people
• Client and Sales – defining a single Sales team and Sales strategy across the newly expanded portfolio of Managed Services and Professional Services solutions. This included:
  • Selection of a single CRM solution (Salesforce) and standardising sales processes and ways of working between Marketing, Sales, Delivery and Finance teams
• Commercial & Legal – defining standardised approaches to contracting with clients and migrating all clients to contracting with a single legal entity.
• Finance – defining processes and ways of working between Finance and Sales and Delivery teams. Including:
  • Selection of a single Finance solution (Sage Intacct) and standardising finance processes and ways of working between Marketing, Sales, Delivery and Finance teams
  • Selection of and migration to a single expenses solution (Concur) – to standardise on a single expenses policy and improve management & reporting of expenses.

For some of these workstreams my role was to provide strategic oversight and ensure that dependencies between projects were clearly understood and that the right people from the right parts of the business were involved in the right projects.
In others I was involved down to the level of detailed business discovery / process mapping / technical solution design / creation of end user training and comms and post-launch troubleshooting.

Over time I became recognised as the person who would “get things done” by bringing together the right stakeholders and decision makers, understanding ‘what works today’ / ‘what needs to be different’ / ‘what would we love to achieve’ – and then implemented new standardised systems, processes and ways of working.

Despite initial resistance from some parts of the business (and from the Exec at times) – we made significant progress – uniting all component businesses into a single coherent business and leaving most business areas in a better place than they had been pre-merger:

• Consolidated all M365 tenants within 9 months (key tenants migrated within 6 months)
• Consolidated all CRM systems to a single Salesforce instance within 12 months
  • Created a new Salesforce handbook that fully documented all Sales processes – for the first time across all merged businesses
• Defined / mapped and documented Managed Services processes
  • Created a new Managed Services handbook that documented MS processes – for the first time across all businesses
• Standardised Professional Services process – including improved SoW creation / approval and contracting approaches. Resulted in a >30% uplift of average consulting day rates across 3 years.
• Implemented a single Expenses policy and process within 2 years
• Consolidated all clients to contracting with a single legal entity within 3 years.

• programme management
• Strategic Planning
• culture change facilitator
• business change
• Business Change Management & Communication

• Process Effectiveness & Automation
• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness

• Business Services
• Technology