According to Deloitte, corporations and private equity firms spent an unprecedented $5 trillion on mergers and acquisitions in 2021. We have seen this trend first-hand from our clients and other firms in the financial industry as well. Small firms that are struggling due to issues around succession planning, staffing constraints, and technology adoption are increasingly being acquired by larger firms who view this as an attractive route to fuel their growth plans.
While these larger firms are aggressively pursuing acquisitions, technology, and specifically technology integration, isn’t always top-of-mind when they’re trying to close deals. When you couple this with the reality that smaller firms may have under invested in technology, the acquiring firms IT staff often struggle to keep pace with the technology integration aspects.
Utilizing Microsoft Azure to Accelerate M&A
Many small firms have been unable to adequately adapt to new technologies that streamline processes and communication that would make workloads more efficient. As these small firms struggle to implement technology, they become prime acquisition targets for large firms. What that means, though, is that the acquiring firms are left to sort out systems, data, networks, hardware, and software, that are out-of-date and often not sufficiently secured.
In order for these acquisitions to ultimately be successful, the acquiring firms must find a way to clean up the acquired technology and securely integrate it into the existing firm fairly quickly. While they manage the ingestion of data and systems, they also need to move the acquired firm employees over to the communications tools (email/video conferencing/chatting) and into the right groups so that they can work with their new teams and communicate with their clients, making the transition feel seamless. Failure in any of these areas can negatively impact the cultural fit and the desired ROI from the acquisition.
So, what’s the solution? Working with an expert Managed Services Provider (MSP) who can help you leverage the public cloud with Microsoft Azure.
Leveraging the public cloud with Microsoft Azure enables the fast and secure creation of IT infrastructure that can be segregated from the acquiring firm’s environment, thus giving the acquired firm a place to safely land while the initial phases of onboarding take place, the pay as you go model allows the acquiring firm the ability to keep the new firms’ data and systems functioning without the outlay of capital to build out temporary storage for the transition period.
Utilizing Azure allows the acquiring firm to absorb the acquired firms more quickly, regardless of what applications they use, what servers and databases they have, or where their data lives. Azure is also scalable, allowing the acquiring firm to sort through the acquired data and apps at pace, rather than racing against the clock and doing things as quickly as possible to minimize security risks.
Why Working with the Right MSP Is Critical
Leveraging Azure to its fullest extent requires expertise – more often than not, expertise that financial firms do not have. That’s why it’s critical to enlist the services of a managed service provider (MSP) that has industry-specific experience.
Netgain is the only MSP with industry-specific expertise in servicing accounting applications in the Microsoft Azure public cloud. We have honed our experience in optimizing the Azure environment for accounting applications and can expand and contract that environment to meet your needs, almost instantly.
By working with Netgain and the public cloud, firms can create a technical bridge to get them through acquisitions more quickly and effectively, so they can see the ROI they want from their acquisitions. Netgain functions as an expansion of your internal tech team and provides security, project management, and support.
Our expertise lies not only in the public cloud, but also in the variety of applications used by accounting firms – while it’s likely that your tech team hasn’t seen every possible technology used by the firm you’re acquiring, Netgain has. Technologies used for auditing, accounting, and tax are highly specialized, and you need an experienced MSP that can handle them all.
Having an industry-specific MSP help you leverage the public cloud will not only allow you to absorb your acquired firms faster, but also see the ROI on your deal faster, increasing the likelihood that you’ll succeed in creating a culture fit that leads to future profits and growth.
Contact Netgain today to learn more about Netgain’s CPA M&A Accelerator.