Overcoming IT Capacity Challenges for a Growing Payment Systems Company

The Problem

A payment systems company on a rapid growth trajectory acquired 40 individual portfolio companies (business units), none of which were running on a common infrastructure standard. Each business unit they acquired managed its infrastructure with limited support from corporate IT. The parent company’s IT department wanted to implement a standard across its portfolio, but they didn’t have the resources to do this effectively while continuing to support the acquisition of new businesses. With so much growth over a short period, corporate IT realized they had several challenges to overcome, and quickly. These included:

• Standardization Concerns: Without a clear reference architecture standard that could be applied to the newly acquired business units, they were unable to deliver support efficiently.
• M&A IT Due-Diligence Limitations: The team performing M&A didn’t have the experience to know which details needed to be documented for post-acquisition migration support and standardization.
• Resource Limitations: Identifying and hiring the right resources to scale internal IT was difficult and time consuming.
• Knowledge Gaps: The in-house expertise to implement an integration and support strategy for an IT infrastructure this expansive was lacking.
• Asset Management Deficiencies: Each portfolio company was procuring and managing their own assets without any corporate oversight or involvement.
• Collaboration Disconnect: None of the business units had a common platform to communicate or share information with the corporation.
• Security Concerns: With such little integration across the portfolio companies, there was no common security configuration, tools, or standardized management framework.
  
  

The Solution

After considering their options, the company decided that the only way to scale IT to support the rapid growth of their business was by partnering with a managed services provider (MSP). Having evaluated various providers, they chose 1Path because of the breadth of our consultative services, our commitment to building strong partnerships, and our ability to provide holistic guidance to support their growth.  

Key actions included:

• Collaborative Support Enablement: The 1Path team worked closely with the company’s internal IT to align on a support enablement strategy and communicate it with other stakeholders across the business. This was done in a multi-phase
• M&A Assessments: Our team created a standardized assessment for each newly acquired business to identify critical IT details and output a plan for integration.
• Integration & Platform Standardization: 1Path dedicated a team to migrating each portfolio company to a common set of technology platforms and IT standards on a very aggressive timeline. This standardization ultimately mitigated gaps in security, cross-business collaboration, and asset management. The integration strategy also included IT support ticket synchronization.
• Growth Planning: To support the company’s main objective of inorganic growth, we strategized a game plan to help streamline the onboarding and integration of new acquisitions that includes consultation, project execution, and platform integration.

The Result

40 portfolio companies were onboarded within the first six months, and their IT support experience has been completely reshaped for the better. Their decision to outsource IT to 1Path yielded extremely positive results.

Some of the major outcomes include: 

• Accelerated Growth: The company doubled in size within a year, leveraging the flexibility and scalability provided by outsourcing.
• Scalable IT Support: The new IT support structure has allowed for seamless scaling and adaptation to the business’s rapid growth.
• IT Standardization: The integration of all portfolio companies onto a common platform that is fully integrated with corporate has allowed the company to reduce risk and gain more efficiency.
• Effective Collaboration: The partnership between in-house IT and 1Path facilitated a smooth transition and continues to foster the success of the ongoing relationship.