When two companies with disparate financial systems merged, ISG assessed the options and helped the new entity choose the optimal solution.
Opportunity
This engagement was a strategic assessment of the financial systems opportunity presented by the merger of two life science companies. Legacy company 1 and legacy company 2 were operating on separate financial environments. In order to understand what financial systems direction the merged company should take to meet the defined objectives below, it wanted to assess the following options. The merged company aimed to leverage recent technology trends towards cloud, mobile, etc.; simplify, streamline and consolidate systems footprint; streamline business operations and forge synergies; lower total cost of ownership and business functions; improve user experience and satisfaction; and increase resource utilization, efficiency and productivity. It hired ISG to assess four potential options: retaining its current systems, extending SAP or Peoplesoft, or choosing a new solution.
Imagining IT Differently
ISG interviewed over 100 key stakeholders and subject matter experts (SME) to document the current systems landscape and pain points, identify gaps and unique customizations, and capture the combined entity’s requirements. ISG also assessed functional areas to determine the complexity and ability to migrate to a unified on-premise or Cloud solution. Using ISG Insights™, we provided market trend and benchmark data to inform the company on both historical and future market trends and show it what strategies its peers were adopting and how developed the provider solutions and market place is. ISG developed a current-state base case and business cases for both on-premise and Cloud-based financial systems options using internal database information as well as provider pricing. With our conservative approach, we identified levers to further improve the business case. ISG developed a strategic roadmap that ran through system implementation.
Future Made Possible
- With ISG’s help, the company presented the recommendation to migrate the current system landscape to a Cloud-based solution. This move would achieve its key objectives to simplify complexity, streamline processes, consolidate footprint, reduce total cost of ownership and improve user experience.
- The company realized several benefits from engaging ISG, including achieving harmonized business processes aligned to its standard Cloud solution and reduced complexity and required technical intervention.
- It increased system resilience and uptime and improved agility, scalability, system performance and flexibility. It also increased and improved its use of mobile. It received on-going statutory and regulatory compliance support and upgrades.
