Can you help me consolidate 20+ acquisitions to minimize back-office expenses?

Automotive Consulting Company 

The Challenge

A private equity-backed automotive aftermarket consulting company has been aggressively acquiring like agencies across the United States to achieve a national footprint. Assimilating these agencies has been cumbersome and expensive. Each new acquisition requires $10,000 in technology application set up to conform to the company’s back office structure and requires additional staff for operations, finance, and reporting. Can a digital transformation strategy help minimize the run rate of expenses as we continue to grow?

 

 

The Solution

The current technology was past its useful life and required a lot of manual workarounds. This was sufficient after 2-3 acquisitions but became unwieldy as the company grew. We needed a solution that consolidated and automated many of the back-office functions. The answer was to create a web-based and mobile application that reduced twenty (20) and counting SQL databases into one database. This accelerated the month-end close, simplified management reporting, and armed sales with a real-time mobile app to manage client expectations better real-time.

The application sits in the middle of the technology stack and communicates seamlessly with the front-end CRM and the back-end accounting system. We also placed a business intelligence layer with Tableau for real-time management reporting and analytics across the organization.

 

Tools Utilized

  1. Tableau
  2. Intacct
  3. .NET Core
  4. MS SQL Server
  5. C#, ASP.NET
  6. HTML
  7. CSS
  8. JavaScript
  9. Flutter
  10. SQLite

Expected Results

The new application significantly reduces the run rate of additional back-office staff required to run the business’s operations, accounting, and financial reporting as it grows. The company now also saves $10,000 in incremental technology expenses as it continues to acquire agencies across the country. The company has been sold twice since this strategy was executed, and the timeliness and accuracy of the information contributed to a higher-than-anticipated multiple for the transaction.