B2B platform with add-ons, PE portfolio
We organized integration after acquisitions
After acquiring complementary companies, a B2B platform in a PE portfolio had to connect its systems while continuing to serve existing customer contracts.
| Industry | B2B Services |
|---|---|
| Services | Tech Transformation, Fractional CTO |
The same terms described different business processes
The platform and its add-ons used their own applications for sales, service delivery and billing. A customer could appear in multiple systems with inconsistent master data. Even the term “order” meant different things in different companies. Teams manually combined exports for shared reports.
Management wanted to consolidate applications and simplify support. Operational teams feared that a central solution would lose the specifics of their contracts. Earlier integration attempts had already created additional interfaces. Their operation depended on external contacts, while business responsibility remained unresolved between the companies.
The target architecture had to support existing contracts
We took technical leadership of the integration and were tasked with developing a shared target architecture and an executable migration path. This required clarity on data ownership, business differences and conditions for retiring systems. Live customer operations determined the sequence. An application could only be retired once its required functions and records were available in the target process.
The migration gained business acceptance checkpoints
The system map identified authoritative data sources
For customers, contracts and service records, we defined which system held the authoritative version and which applications depended on it.
The target architecture included justified exceptions
We consolidated shared functions. Contractually required differences remained documented, with a decision on their place in the future system landscape.
The migration path followed business workflows
We divided the migration into verifiable transitions. Each included data reconciliation, business approval, a rollback option and responsibility for errors.
A retirement register tracked remaining tasks
Access, archives, interfaces and supplier contracts were checked before each replacement. This allowed a technically unused system to be closed out organizationally as well.
Business teams tested the migration on customer cases
In joint working sessions with IT, finance and operational owners, we reviewed concrete customer workflows. Teams showed which information they needed for invoices, records and follow-up questions. Only then did we decide on systems of record. This helped distinguish familiar interfaces from functions the business needed.
We regularly discussed competing priorities with management and the operating partner. Immediately standardizing billing would have accelerated consolidation, but pushed contractual exceptions into manual side processes. We chose a transition with clearly bounded interfaces. The plan explicitly accounted for their ongoing support.
Before each cutover, business teams compared migrated records with the previous state. We resolved discrepancies together and checked them again. We ended parallel operation only after business approval. We left the same acceptance criteria for further consolidation, so later steps could be prepared without reopening fundamental decisions.
The platform could retire applications in a controlled way
The teams worked with an agreed target architecture and understood their data responsibilities. Shared functions were consolidated, while justified exceptions received a documented transition. Management could see which systems were ready for retirement and which dependencies still needed work. Customer operations remained the standard for further migrations.
Data ownership must be clear before systems are retired
Terms need business definitions
Use real cases to clarify what each company means by customer, order and service.
Parallel operation needs an endpoint
Record which evidence permits shutdown and who accepts that evidence.
Temporary interfaces need support
Plan incident reporting and data reconciliation even for connections that will later be removed.
A first conversation takes 30 minutes.
We discuss which business dependencies determine the technical integration of your acquisitions.