IT Integration After M&A: A Manufacturer’s Microsoft 365 Journey
Industry
Manufacturing
Customer
Global heavy equipment manufacturer
Our client is a machinery manufacturer that employs thousands of people worldwide. The company has grown through acquisitions in the past six years. Each deal has added new talent and technology, but it has also introduced increased IT complexity.
Key Highlights
Situation
The manufacturing firm rapidly expanded its operations through acquisitions. However, every new acquisition means inheriting separate IT systems.
For instance, it meant different tenants for email, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Often, identity management was duplicated, with employees having to use multiple logins. It increased the number of IT support tickets (open at a given time) for common access management issues.
Despite the company’s acquisitions-led growth, scattered systems slowed things down.
The company wanted to consolidate the tools it used for identity and access management. A unified environment would mean simpler administration, better security, and collaboration among employees worldwide.
Problem
Although consolidation of tools being used was the clear answer, it was not a simple task. The IT team faced several related issues as well, including:
Duplicate identities and login conflicts that could lock users out or expose data
DNS and namespace migrations that risked breaking critical apps
Security gaps during transition periods
Complex endpoints and user setups that often frustrated new employees
All of this meant that the customer’s team was staring at likely downtime and disruption without a structured plan to refer to during the migration.
The company realized it couldn’t afford trial and error with thousands of employees at stake. It needed a partner who had done this before and could guarantee a smooth handover. That’s when X-Centric IT Solutions was brought in for advisory and implementation of post-merger technology consolidation.
Solution
The company hired X-Centric IT Solutions to ensure a smooth and secure transition.
X-Centric used Quest On-Demand Migration and Microsoft 365 tools to design a phased approach for technology integration. The team first tackled identity integration across Active Directory and Entra ID, ensuring that every employee had a single, secure identity.
Then, our team migrated collaboration workloads, including Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, in waves that reduced downtime.
At the same time, X-Centric unified security policies to help customers’ IT teams manage risk consistently across the entire business.
In this post-acquisition situation, the security policies that mattered most for the customer were:
Identity and access management
Device and endpoint security
Data protection and governance
Security of Email and collaboration tools
Standardizing audit and monitoring
By combining industrial-grade endpoint security with data protection and continuous monitoring, our team helped ensure resilience across the client’s digital (IT) and operational environment (OT).
These policies helped employees log in safely from any device, sensitive files stayed protected, and IT could spot unusual activity right away. For the business, that meant peace of mind while employees got on with their work.
Operational Impact
As soon as everything was under one tenant, the improvements began to appear quickly. For example:
The company cut licensing costs by buying at scale instead of managing duplicate subscriptions.
New employees were onboarded faster, with fewer IT tickets around access and setup.
Workers could now collaborate in Teams or SharePoint without cross-tenant issues.
Small wins like fewer help desk calls and faster logins added up to something bigger: the business could bring new teams on board faster and realize deal value sooner.
Business Outcomes
Business Outcomes
The project helped the customer to realize the full potential and return on investment (ROI) of the acquisition. The acquired firm’s staff was integrated more quickly than in the previous acquisition. While IT was the primary beneficiary of the post-acquisition consolidation, though, every department involved reported a better experience after the consolidation of systems.
Below, we’ve summarized a few key outcomes our client has achieved.
Lower IT Overhead – One tenant instead of many, simpler management.
Stronger Security & Compliance – Centralized policies reduce risks and make audits easier.
Better Productivity – Employees worked together without barriers, regardless of their location.
Faster M&A Integration – IT no longer slowed down acquisitions; it helped realize deal value sooner.
It could now bring hundreds of new users into the environment in weeks, so the benefits of each deal became apparent in the business much faster.
