Four Ways an SMP Can Help IT Manage M&A Post-Closing Processes

No matter what type of merger and acquisition your company is going through, the post-closing processes always place a heavy burden on IT. Integrating multiple IT environments—while also keeping up with day-to-day support—can be a tough challenge.

Following any merger and acquisition, IT usually ends up with a laundry list of tasks that can include:

• Establishing a full picture of all IT environments that are being integrated.
• Selecting which apps in the tech stack to keep, and which to phase out.
• Locating and protecting sensitive and proprietary data.
• Identifying other potential security gaps, including shadow IT.
• Internally onboarding and offboarding employees to and from different systems (such as from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 or vice versa).

With a SaaS management platform (SMP) like BetterCloud, you get a powerful tool for tackling these challenges. Let’s take a closer look at an SMP with a centralized grid view, bulk administration, and IT automation capabilities can make post-merger integrations far more manageable.

1. Gain a complete view of all the SaaS apps across two or more merging IT environments

Gaining full visibility into all the SaaS apps in use can be a challenge with just one tech stack. When two environments merge, this quickly becomes twice as hard. With an SMP like BetterCloud, you can use SSO and OAuth discovery to gain a unified view of everything: all the SaaS in use (including shadow IT), users, groups, files, channels, settings, and other data. This gives you a full understanding of the breadth of what exists in your new post-M&A environment.

With this centralized view, you can quickly spot any potential redundancies. For example, if one company used Asana for project management and another used Trello, you can recommend migrating everyone to one tool. This not only saves costs, but also enhances collaboration across new teams and removes silos.

With best in breed SaaS, it’s very possible that both companies have some of the same apps in use—like Slack, for example. With a SaaS management platform, you can manage multiple instances of SaaS applications from one location. This gives IT teams the flexibility to control each of the merging company’s tech stacks until they eventually deprecate one side. Below, we’ll also take a look at how automated workflows can also help migrate users from one instance to the other in minutes.

“I can go into my BetterCloud portal and see all of our users through every application.”

Ryan Donnon, Director of IT, First Round Capital

2. Automate user lifecycle changes, such as onboarding employees to a new system

M&A activities often include numerous mid-lifecycle changes for employees at the company being integrated. This is where automating user lifecycle management with workflows can save IT a lot of time—and boost productivity as well.

Let’s say a smaller company using Google Workspace is acquired by a larger one primarily using Microsoft 365. Manually creating all those new profiles and then deleting existing Google Workspace licenses would take IT a really long time. Entering all that data manually might also result in typos or other errors, causing IT to go back and make even more changes. Worse, the productivity of the employees at the company being acquired would be impacted as they wait for access to new systems and tools.

With an SMP, your IT team can quickly build an automated workflow that creates new users in Microsoft 365 based on information in their Google Workspace profiles. When the workflow is run, a complete set of new profiles would be created in just minutes. Then, they could create a second automated workflow that offboards those users from Google, and then deletes the licenses to save on cost.

3. Keep super admins to a minimum, even with a growing IT team

Integrating multiple IT teams can easily lead to mismatched access rights and too many super admins. There are two features in an SMP like BetterCloud that can help you address this: granular admin roles and alert-based workflows.

An SMP can perform administrative functions in the apps it integrates with, removing the need to log into every app individually. New accounts can be made for incoming IT team members inside of the SMP, with customized access based on their job. The new staff can then use the SMP to administer apps directly, instead of creating additional super admin accounts in the apps themselves.

You can also leverage alerts and automation to enforce least privilege access policies with merging teams. The first step is to set up an alert that notifies you when more super admin accounts are created for an app than your policy allows. You can then create an alert-based workflow to automatically delete or disable new accounts before they can be used.

4. Locate and protect sensitive and proprietary data in file-sharing apps

There are very few companies now that don’t leverage file-sharing apps of some kind. When you merge IT environments, you want to make sure you aren’t introducing the risk of a data breach. With content scanning and automated security workflows, you can quickly uncover any potential risks, and, if needed, remediate them instantly.

Before you bring new data into an existing IT environment, your IT team can use an SMP like BetterCloud to perform a one-time content scan of whatever file-sharing apps were in use. You can search for PII, credit card numbers, proprietary information, or any other sensitive data. In a single view, you can see the file name, the file owners, and what app the data resides in. Once you’ve located all the potentially risky files, you can take bulk actions to unshare or even delete them to keep your existing environment protected.

After you’ve completed the one-time scan, you can set up the same scans to be performed in an ongoing way in your new, blended environment. File-sharing apps make it very easy for employees to improperly share sensitive or proprietary data. You can set up alerts to notify you when sensitive data is improperly shared, and even create workflows to unshare or delete the file automatically.

Across your post-M&A environment, an SMP can centralize management of all SaaS applications, users, groups, and files. By giving you visibility into your applications, a SaaS management platform surfaces critical insights that let you make informed decisions about the new environment—such as what apps to keep, and which to retire.

For internally migrating employees to and from apps, a no-code workflow builder gives IT teams a powerful way to save time, reduce errors, and get employees collaborating faster. Even something as complex as moving employees from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace—or vice versa—can be achieved in just a few minutes and a couple of clicks.

To learn more about BetterCloud can help with your M&A activities, schedule a demo today.