Out by Private Equity Firm

A mid-market private equity firm acquired the software division of a global information services provider. The goal: transform the carved-out division into a standalone SaaS platform company. This new entity would serve as the foundation for future organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions, with a business model built around converting on-premise legacy applications into scalable, cloud-first services. Post-acquisition, the company included close to 1,000 employees across several international locations—none of whom had access to the systems they used just weeks before.

A newly appointed VP of Technology with deep enterprise implementation experience was brought on board to lead the transformation. Early into the engagement, he partnered with Sphere to co-own delivery, bringing in our expertise across finance systems, CRM, integration architecture, and digital operations. Our first step was to make sense of what was missing and what needed to be built.

We kicked off the project with a short but intensive discovery sprint. In two weeks, we worked side-by-side with business leads to reverse-engineer workflows from scratch. Using a mix of diligence documentation, interviews, and operational shadowing, we developed business requirement documents (BRDs) for each core domain. These would serve as the blueprint for system selection, configuration, and integration.

Given the complexity of the transition, Sphere recommended a “best-of-breed” cloud stack that could deliver enterprise capabilities on a fast track. NetSuite was selected to replace a fragmented ERP and financial toolset (previously SAP ECC and MS Dynamics), while HubSpot was chosen to replace legacy CRM platforms like Saleslogix. These systems offered the global capabilities the company needed—multi-currency, multi-subsidiary support, international data residency compliance—and delivered over 80% of required functionality out of the box, which drastically reduced customization time.

Implementation moved quickly. Change management was embedded from day one. Key functional team members were identified and pulled into the configuration process—not only to provide inputs but to become champions of the new systems. This hands-on involvement accelerated internal adoption and created accountability for future phases of the rollout.

As expected in a carve-out of this scale, not everything could be delivered by the go-live date. Some automation flows and non-critical integrations were flagged early on as too complex to risk delaying the core transition. These were prioritized for post-rollout implementation—an approach made possible by constant scope management and triage across every department.

When the go-live date arrived, the company was fully operational. Core financial and CRM systems were live globally, users had been onboarded, and basic processes were running cleanly. Immediately afterward, a stabilization phase began, where our team helped fine-tune configurations and implement the deferred features. We continued supporting QA, training, and refinement until the business was running independently with minimal disruption, using Agile methodologies.

Divestiture/Carve-out driven system implementation projects inevitably surface challenges requiring unique solutions. Aggressive implementation timeframe, insufficient internal resources, spare documentation, conflicting priorities and complex scope are some of the characteristics of M&A technology projects. Time-to-implement is almost inherent to this class of solutions because of the impending deadlines as a condition of the separation. Dedicated, augmented resources are crucial to succeeding against these inflexible constraints.

The team must possess deep technical and functional expertise to be able to quickly determine in-scope/out-of-scope requirements and focus primarily on the vital aspects of the implementation. These are qualities that aren’t necessarily out of reach for internal teams, but they are less likely transition seamlessly into this dynamic problem space as teams that have Sphere’s wealth of experience at integrating complex systems projects across the whole of just-created new corporate entity. It is important to understand that an M&A transaction is an extremely disruptive and stressful time for any organization. Change management, system adoption, system training, and post rollout support should be included in your implementation planning.