Time Tracking Is a Catalyst For Driving Revenue In Your Post M&A Strategy

In today’s highly digital world, Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) have become a common strategy for large services organizations looking to expand into new markets, gain a competitive advantage, diversify, or get access to new technologies & talents. An M&A activity creates value for organizations and helps them fulfil strategic objectives that might not be possible through organic growth alone. 

As per a report published by the financial data company Refinitiv, the total value of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) deals announced globally in 2022 was $3.61 trillion. A study by global management consulting firm, Bain & Company, further reveals that despite the macroeconomic uncertainty that has curtailed M&A activity, bold technology companies are still making game-changing M&A deals to emerge stronger out of the downturn.

Evaluating Your Time Tracking Technology Landscape Post Merger and Acquisition

For a successful mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal, finding organizations using the same applications and systems are next to impossible. However, enterprise integration and real-time visibility are the primary challenges of a sound post-mergers and acquisitions strategy. This scenario is the result of organizations using multiple and disparate time tracking systems to complement their work processes and revenue models. The cocktail of these disparate legacy systems houses various functions, resulting in redundant functionalities and increased costs. This further leads to operational business inefficiencies, revenue leakages, lack of visibility, poor governance and compliance, and more.

Here is a closer look at the persistent issues that are a result of using disparate time tracking systems:

• Siloed Data: One of the primary challenges that businesses face with their hybrid, globally dispersed workforce is that of siloed data. A majority of large businesses have their project time data scattered among distributed systems, including CRM, PSA, HCM, payroll, project management, on-premise databases, and more, as a result of their complex operational environments. The lack of current and accurate time data results in inaccurate costing and billing, which ultimately causes revenue leakages and reduced project profitability. Failing to account for even a minute of billable time can cost a business millions of dollars.
• Inefficient Operations: Organizations with a segmented ecosystem and numerous time tracking systems are incredibly ineffective and poorly integrated. As a result of these inefficiencies, employees struggle to maintain accurate timesheets and submit them on time. Several inefficient operations hamper employee productivity.
• Increased Costs: The overall cost of ownership for time tracking systems tends to increase because organizations use numerous systems, some of which may have overlapping functions.
• Clunky Employee Experience: The requirement to use numerous systems frustrates employees on a regular basis. This makes daily work more time-consuming and confusing. Your employees are burdened with switching between various systems to track and manage their work data, which makes them prone to making errors.
• Poor Governance: Implementing rules and regulations within a fragmented software environment takes more time and effort. The likelihood of dangers multiplies without an appropriate real-time system of record.
• Zero or Insufficient Support: Multiple and fragmented systems can also cause support problems, for which you must proactively keep a large number of help desk resources on standby. Employees must create many passwords for each system due to the unreliable and fractured digital experience, which leaves them prone to cyberattacks. Additionally, other teams apart from help desk teams end up getting involved in these problems. This causes more delays and costs.

This scattered structure makes it crucial for services organizations to quickly integrate systems, applications and databases to get their business processes up and running in a unified platform, especially in case of a merger or acquisition.

Seven Factors to
Guide the Build Vs Buy Decision

Download

What Should Be a Tailored Approach for Post Merger and Acquisition Success? 

You must be already aware that the usual challenge after an M&A deal is to have a single source of truth for all your project time data. Therefore, as a first step, it is essential to integrate all disparate time tracking systems into one and unify the data needed to drive insight-based decisions. This will not only keep your business running smoothly but also help it gain a competitive edge. Your stakeholders will gain access to an ecosystem that is prepared for the future.

A robust unified time tracking system greatly increases the productivity and profitability levels of professional services organizations. A time intelligence platform, powered with AI/ML capabilities, will give your business a single source of truth for data, helping you drive increased employee productivity and higher project profitability. In addition, ensuring a better employee experience with accurate project time tracking data, puts your business in a win-win situation and helps achieve success in the hybrid digital workplace. Large services organizations need to be mindful of the technology challenges to stay out of the line of fire and deliver a smooth transition, especially after completing a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity. 

At this point, services organizations are faced with the challenge of choosing between buying a readily available time tracking solution off the shelf or building an in-house system. Some large professional services organizations believe that buying a best-in-class time tracking platform costs more than building a custom solution in house. Others believe off-the-shelf solutions are more affordable with less maintenance and less risk. Unfortunately, reality isn’t as rigid as it appears.

Risks of Building a Time Tracking Platform From Scratch

A majority of businesses are unaware of all the risks associated with creating a time tracking solution from scratch. As a result, before deciding to pursue the option of building it yourself, you must first think about the following factors:

1. It is custom-made, designed to meet your present needs. Therefore, you will need to invest more time and labor to complete the new features as they become necessary in the future. Adding features will increase costs because your business largely depends on billable hours for revenue.
2. Your resources won’t have as much time to concentrate on other crucial tasks because homegrown software necessitates frequent connection with the software development and installation teams.
3. Depending on the features you need, your time tracking software development will cost more or less. The Total cost of Ownership (TCO) is sometimes two to three times the initial estimate, according to industry sources.
4. Any software requires ongoing maintenance, so you’ll need a dedicated team to support it and address any potential problems in the future that could cost you more money.
5. The process of development can take a while. While certain features can be developed quickly, others can take years. Even after extensive testing and research, you won’t be certain if the process will help you build the desired product or not.

Be Future-Ready With a Unified Platform

Generally, developing an in-house time tracking software is more expensive and time-consuming. It takes a longer time to implement, is frequently more challenging to use, and lacks the complete capabilities of commercially available software. And it is not guaranteed to be successful! If your business is losing revenue through gaps and inefficiencies, then time is an even more critical factor to be considered. Buying the software instead will address your immediate needs and help your business improve profitability.

According to Aberdeen, “65% of organizations are prioritizing implementing a unified and centralized global time -tracking platform. Cloud-based time- tracking is key to thriving in a digital workplace to gain real-time visibility into project data.”

Let us take a deeper look at the benefits of buying a global time tracking system :

• Multiple Use Cases: Buying a time tracking system allows organizations to leverage their existing expertise in multiple use cases without needing to delve into the intricacies of building features for each use case.

• • Buying a cloud-first time tracking platform allows organizations to rapidly integrate it into their existing operational workflows and cover multiple use cases such as project billing, time costing, payroll, labor compliance, and data security, from day one. As organizational requirements grow, the system will already have the tech capabilities in place to meet those requirements, without any additional investment or waiting period. 

• Faster Time to Market: Building a time tracking platform ready for use globally can take several years of research, development, and fine-tuning. However, purchasing a readily available platform enables you to utilize such a platform’s advantages quickly. The longest you will have to wait is for the platform to be installed and configured, which might take only a few days.
• Minimal Support and Maintenance: The responsibility for upkeep and support falls on the solution provider when buying a solution. The provider shall be responsible for the ongoing upkeep, patches, and updates to provide you with a hassle-free experience, including seamless upgrades and maintenance, and a superior customer experience. With a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model, the provider will take care of all the software updates and supports with zero downtime.
• Gentle Learning Curve: Large professional services organizations generally find the learning curve gentler and easier with commercial time tracking solutions. These products have been created to be utilized by a variety of users with varied levels of technical expertise. Therefore, it is in the provider’s best interest to ensure their solutions are more intuitive and more user-friendly.
• Out-of-the Box Integrations: A time intelligence platform easily integrates with most of your existing systems like CRM, ERP, HCM, and many more, to streamline the project management process and capture time and expense data for accurate project billing in real time. The integration helps centralize all client and project data, ensuring: 

• • Improved project visibility with real-time syncing of time data
  • Accuracy in project expenses, billing and invoicing
  • Availability of and accessibility to all data in one single place

• Built-in Compliance: If you have a global business, then labor and wage compliance, and compliance with working time directives can be tricky. To ensure proper compliance with global labor laws, businesses should opt for a solution that offers:

• • An in-house legal team
  • Built-in compliance library, dashboards, and time off policies to manage specific regional regulations and tax requirements, without worrying about employee location
  • A single view of all the pay rules while tracking any compliance update

Large services organizations that opt to build an in-house solution will end up focusing their efforts and resources on goals unrelated to their core objectives. Over time, this may have an impact on their financial prospects. However, using a pre-built global time tracking platform enables businesses to maintain their focus on their operations and remain free from distractions. 

In the event of a merger or acquisition, it makes business sense to buy a solution and personalize it according to your unique requirements, rather than building one from scratch! 

Proven Power of Replicon’s Unified Time Tracking Platform for Your Next Merger or Acquisition

Replicon has been enabling large services organizations with a single source of truth for time data with a unified, secure, scalable, and cloud-first platform. It leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine language (ML) capabilities to automate operations, increase operational effectiveness and efficiency, shorten billing cycles, stop revenue leakage, and ensure project completion on time and within budget.

With Replicon’s unified time tracking platform, professional services organizations have benefited from smooth plug-and-play connections with numerous ERP, CRM, and project management systems. Replicon is the industry’s only Time Intelligence platform with an in-house legal team that monitors labor and wage compliance, supports 375 labor rules across 147+ jurisdictions in 85+ countries.This improves their existing ecosystem’s speed of delivery while also adding value with built-in global compliance pay rules.

So, if you are contemplating a merger or acquisition, Replicon can be your trusted partner.

Seven Factors to
Guide the Build Vs Buy Decision

Download