Our client is a world leader in media intelligence technology and services, dedicated to supporting PR, Communications, and Marketing professionals.
The Challenges
Our client empowers the world’s leading brands and agencies to modernize their communications through media monitoring and measurement, delivering an enhanced customer experience and increased CSAT/Net Promoter Scores. When the client carved out an infomediary unit as part of a spin-off, the company needed a comprehensive TSA (Transition Service Agreement) for IT management during and after the transition. This program would involve a wide range of technical elements – e.g., retirement and refactoring of legacy systems, data center management and support both on-prem and in the cloud, security, and data strategy including retention and recovery — but also business services such as application support, maintenance and enhancements for CRM, marketing, and other software platforms. This program also had additional complexity because our client was integrating three recently acquired companies which also needed to be factored into a steady-state plan.
Fundamentally, the company required Persistent to set up scalable, reliable, and secured IT systems, and provide IT managed services for its “NewCo” entity – and critically, meet a strict exit timeline, supported by a centralized and standardized application, infrastructure and data footprint to boost the sales efficiency of the new organization. Our client also wanted to reduce IT complexity and cost through an ideal set of IT tool sets and solutions, recommended by Persistent, and achieve a smooth transition with zero business disruption. The infrastructure extended across the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the US, encompassing 1,200 users, more than 100 apps, more than 1,300 servers, and 1,000 TB of storage — so a coordinated, programmatic approach to this project was critical.
The Solutions
Persistent’s consultants began by understanding the larger business goals of the new entity, as a combination of four companies. Persistent needed to enable and support the entire cycle, from carve out to consolidation.
Our team developed a multi-phased approach, including architecture, design, hardware and software procurement, solution development, implementation, migration, and operations. Initially, we transitioned IT services to Persistent, while consolidating a separate Salesforce CRM instance for the new unit. Next, our digital engineers performed a greenfield setup for the following capabilities:
- Service Desk
- Network Operations Center (NOC) and Security Operations Center (SOC)
- Data Center (on-prem, AWS, and Azure)
- Database, Security, End User Computing
- IP Telephony and IT Service Management
- Salesforce consolidation with an optimized roadmap aligned to the revised GTM strategy
Throughout the project, Persistent maintained a core focus on standardization, cloud-first automation and productivity improvement, with 100% ITIL-based service delivery. We hosted discovery workshops, performed organizational due diligence, and created a global support team across the US, Europe, India, and Australia.
Persistent migrated multiple application and data instances, with minimal changes, enabling the new entity to launch in just three months while avoiding additional license costs, while standardizing the company’s entire IT footprint.
The Outcomes
The comprehensive Persistent plan enabled a genuine technology transformation through several elements: the modernization of legacy systems and the greenfield setup of cloud-based IT infrastructure, standardized all applications with 40% reduced license costs, and cloud security for the new carved-out business entity. In addition, we completed the TSA exit in just eight months, saving four months of additional costs. Once the separate entity was established, we provided IT integration across the four newly acquired companies within it.
Overall, Persistent committed to and delivered 30% KPI enhancement, specifically improved business and IT KPIs. We also forecast additional cost savings over five years through the implementation of industry standard tools and frameworks, with a committed reduction in cloud consumption by leveraging FinOps frameworks. Thanks to our ability to perform as a consulting organization and as a Digital Engineering provider, we delivered a dual win for our client, encompassing both M&A activity and the utilization of next-generation technology.
Technology Used
- AWS
- Orange Cloud
- VMWare
- Site24X7
- Zabbix
- Splunk
- SolarWinds
- Rubrik
- Oracle
- PostgreSQL
- O356
- ServiceNow
- 8X8
