Situation
After over a decade of mergers and acquisitions, a large wireless carrier was preparing for sale and had to address the underutilized and underperforming technology assets they acquired on their way to becoming one of the top national wireless carriers. Additionally, they had to prepare to integrate technology assets with an acquiring company of equal size and meet an acquisition close date that was just weeks before their busiest sales cycle.
Solution
First, the company’s GM for IT Operations, now a NextLevel partner, assessed the company’s infrastructure operations, then created a plan and budget, and led the execution of a multi-dimensional program. Before the sale the top priority was to increase efficiencies and fully recognize the benefits within the upcoming calendar year. Vendor contracts were reviewed and renegotiated, and underutilized hardware and software was consolidated or retired. Functions were analyzed to move in-house while other work was designated to move out.
While the company sale was in processes, another team was created to perform the necessary due diligence itemizing both companies’ technology assets and determining which assets would move to the new company. Critical to a seamless integration was ensuring customers would have a unified experience whether calling customer care or visiting a retail location. The new brand had to launch overnight, including the rebranding of over 3,000 retail locations and training of over 35,000 call center representatives.
Results
The pre-sale strategy met the goals to increase efficiencies and effectiveness of the IT organization. During the merger and acquisition process, a due diligence team from both companies identified and delivered the new company technology platform successfully integrating two national wireless carriers. Results include:
- A 40% reduction of annual IT operating expenses, realized within one calendar year through the improved vendor contracts, retirement of legacy and underutilized systems, and movement of workloads to the right resources.
- Overnight rebranding of 3,000 retail locations, including new sales systems just weeks prior to the largest annual sales cycle.
- Delivery of an integrated customer care experience, spanning over 35,000 customer service representative agents.
- Unified infrastructure operations spanning data centers, data and voice networks and over 100,000 end user devices.