Solutions / M&A Integrations
For CIOs, CISOs, and integration management offices
XOPS reconciles two fragmented estates into a single source of truth for the combined entity.
Months of post-close integration work collapse into days.
The integration reality
Every post-close integration runs on the same fragile assumption: that two systems of record can be merged into one. They can’t — not by hand. Two HR systems, two identity stacks, two asset inventories, and a TSA timer counting down while the consulting firm fills the gap with people in spreadsheets.
The acquirer runs Workday. The acquired runs SuccessFactors, Oracle, or ADP. Until the combined org chart is reconciled — cost center by cost center, manager by manager — payroll runs from both. The combined headcount on the post-close press release is a guess.
The parent’s systems stay billable until you’re off them. Every month past the TSA timer is a six- or seven-figure reconciliation, run by people whose jobs you’re trying to phase out. Extensions get expensive fast.
EY, Deloitte, and Accenture bring strong integration playbooks. The systems on both sides don’t agree with each other — or with what’s actually deployed — so every engagement begins with weeks of data reconciliation no one keeps. Senior judgment ends up buried under spreadsheet work that won’t survive Day 1.
Two Salesforce tenants, two Microsoft estates, two Adobes, two of nearly everything — each contract anchored to its own historical headcount. Reconciling overlap requires data neither side has. Renewals start arriving before the rationalization is done.
The acquired engineer logs in Monday morning. Whose laptop? Whose email? Whose VPN? Whose ticketing system? The answer is supposed to be “ours now” — but every system contradicts every other system, and the help desk has no script for “you don’t exist yet.”
The decisions that should happen in week one
happen in month four.
What XOPS coordinates
XOPS holds the reconciled state of every employee, contractor, asset, contract, and seat across both companies. The integration stops being a six-month data-reconciliation project. Your partner spends their time on judgment — not on spreadsheets that won’t survive Day 1.
1 · Reconcile both estates
Every employee, contractor, device, license, mobile line, vendor contract, seat, and conference room — across the acquirer and the target — reconciled against a single knowledge graph.
The physical world catches up to the deal close on Day 1.
2 · Execute the migration
Every operational system migrates and unifies simultaneously, gated by Configuration-as-Code. Acquired employees onboard the morning of close — into the acquirer’s systems, with the acquirer’s identity.
3 · Defensible audit trail
Every migration carries who made it, what evidence supported it, and which approver signed. Defensible to regulators, to the TSA partner, and to the integration program auditor six months after close.
Five workstreams · before and after
Every post-close integration runs through the same five workstreams. Each one is where the discovery months disappear — and each one is where a reconciled operational picture changes the work entirely.
Workstream
Without XOPS
With XOPS
IT and device estate
Manual audit of the target’s devices and infrastructure takes 4–8 weeks. Consolidation decisions wait.
Full device and infrastructure picture within 48 hours of data ingestion. Consolidation plan ready on day one.
Software contract rationalization
Contracts surface over time as renewals hit. Duplicate enterprise agreements go undetected for months.
All contracts, terms, and expiry dates surfaced immediately. Rationalization decisions made before renewals trigger.
Customer record unification
Duplicate accounts surface when two reps contact the same customer. CRM cleanup runs for months.
Customer entities deduplicated automatically. Unified account list available before the sales team is restructured.
Software ownership & disposition
1,000+ applications need owners assigned before keep/kill/migrate decisions can be made. Weeks of manual audit.
SAM data maps ownership automatically. Disposition decisions begin immediately, without a manual audit.
ERP & financial alignment
ERP rationalization delayed until both systems are fully understood. Often the last workstream to complete.
Outstanding POs, AR/AP, and committed vendor obligations surfaced at ingestion. ERP decisions informed by real data from day one.
The Day 1 test
Every acquired employee logging in on Day 1 needs to know — without a help-desk ticket, without an email thread, without a parallel spreadsheet — where they report in the combined org, what their cost center is, what device is now theirs, what software they have access to, and how to get support.
The platform makes that true.
The compressed integration timeline
Each stage runs three to six months earlier than a traditional integration. Discovery work that usually still occupies month three is done in week one. The integration team spends the back half of the year creating value, not catching up.
Week 1–2
Integration team has the acquired company’s complete operational picture. Contract rationalization decisions begin. Customer deduplication complete. Software disposition queue active.
Month 1
Duplicate software contracts cancelled. Customer accounts unified. Device estate mapped and consolidation plan approved. Sales team restructured with clean account assignments.
Month 2–3
ERP and financial system rationalization decided with full data in hand. IT infrastructure consolidation plan approved and underway. Tracking against plan — not still in discovery.
Month 4–6
Core systems consolidated. Synergy realisation on track. Integration team focused on value creation, not remediation. The month that used to mean “starting to plan” now means “closing the gap.”
Without XOPS, every milestone above runs three to six months later. Discovery work that should happen in week one is still happening in month three.
What this looks like
The pattern · F500 acquirer mid-integration
Illustrative
A Fortune 500 acquirer faces the familiar post-close stack: two HR systems running parallel payroll, two identity providers with overlapping accounts, two SAM tools reporting conflicting license counts, and a TSA timer that turns every extension into a seven-figure invoice. The data needed to migrate cleanly doesn’t exist in any single system. XOPS reconciles both estates against a single knowledge graph, declares the end state of the combined entity, and lets the Convergence Engine carry out the migration system by system — with provenance on every change. Quarters of integration scope collapse into weeks of platform work.
Your partner still owns the methodology. The data work stops being the bottleneck.
Day 1 and beyond
From Day 1 forward, the combined entity operates as a single company. One identity perimeter. One audit log. The TSA stops bleeding. The duplicate stacks retire on a schedule. The acquired employees are first-class citizens of the new operating model.
Unified data
Two estates converged into a single knowledge graph. One source of truth across the combined entity.
Unified identity
Acquired identities migrated. Single identity provider. Single SSO. Single source of access.
TSA exit
Dependencies on the parent’s systems retired on a known schedule. Every cutover traceable.
Continuity
Acquired employees, devices, and entitlements live in the acquirer’s systems on Day 1.
Day 1 becomes activation, not implementation.
For CIOs, IMOs, and integration programs
You still need a partner. You no longer need them to rebuild the data.
Accuracy guaranteed, not estimated. Defensible, not reconstructed.
