Providing Marketing & Technology Services to Manufacturers and Retailers
Service
Cloud Infrastructure, Modern Workplace
Industry
Technology
Platform
Microsoft, Azure
Key Terms
Organizational Change Management (OCM), Cloud Foundation, Productivity Platform
Quick Snapshot
Driving Productivity and Operational Alignment
Challenge
Advantage Solutions, a rapidly growing organization based in Irvine, California, faced significant hurdles stemming from its aggressive acquisition strategy. With over 10 organizations acquired, the company grappled with the complexities of integrating disparate technologies and aligning thousands of new employees to a unified platform. Core operational challenges, such as email, file management, and team collaboration, compounded the difficulties of consolidating platforms and maintaining operational continuity.
Solution
To address these challenges, Advantage Solutions partnered with RBA to execute a comprehensive integration strategy across organizational and technical dimensions. RBA deployed its proven framework for Organizational Change Management (OCM), ensuring smooth transitions through stakeholder alignment, ongoing user feedback, and measurable adoption metrics. By establishing a robust cloud foundation focused on security, compliance, and mobility, RBA created a consistent architecture for onboarding acquired organizations. Leveraging the capabilities of Office 365—including SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, and PowerApps—RBA transformed Advantage Solutions’ productivity tools into a cohesive platform, supported by Azure AD for seamless access and compliance.
Impact
RBA’s strategic approach enabled Advantage Solutions to successfully migrate over 3,000 users from more than 10 acquired organizations to a unified Office 365 environment. By creating a scalable, repeatable integration process, RBA helped Advantage Solutions streamline technology onboarding, improve collaboration, and increase productivity. This transformative experience allowed Advantage Solutions to align its operations across acquisitions, empowering employees with modern tools and creating a foundation for continued growth.
Process
At RBA, our integration process is designed to address the technical and organizational complexities of mergers and acquisitions, ensuring seamless onboarding and alignment across multiple entities. We begin with Organizational Change Management (OCM), prioritizing the people aspect of change. By engaging project sponsors and IT leaders, we establish clear objectives and alignment, then extend outreach to end users through structured communication, training, and ongoing support. Our iterative approach includes gathering feedback, measuring adoption, and continuously refining the experience to drive meaningful and lasting results.
Next, we focus on building a robust Cloud Foundation that provides a standardized and secure architecture for integrating acquired organizations. This foundation addresses critical areas such as security, compliance, mobility, and desktop environments, ensuring consistency and scalability across the enterprise. Finally, we leverage the capabilities of a Productivity Platform to enable collaboration and efficiency. Using tools like Office 365—SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, PowerApps, and Flow—integrated with Azure Active Directory, we empower employees to work effectively within a unified system while meeting compliance requirements. This comprehensive process ensures smooth transitions, enhanced productivity, and a scalable framework for future growth.
Organizational Change Management (OCM)
Cloud Foundation
Productivity Platform
Solution
RBA provided Advantage Solutions with a comprehensive and scalable solution to address the challenges of integrating multiple acquired organizations into a unified technology platform. By combining Organizational Change Management (OCM), a robust Cloud Foundation, and a powerful Productivity Platform, we streamlined the onboarding process for over 3,000 users across more than 10 organizations. Our OCM methodology ensured that people remained at the center of the transformation, fostering alignment, user adoption, and continuous improvement. The Cloud Foundation provided a standardized, secure architecture to support consistent integration across acquisitions, while the Productivity Platform, powered by Office 365 tools such as SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive, delivered a transformative collaboration and compliance experience. This end-to-end solution enabled Advantage Solutions to consolidate platforms, improve operational alignment, and establish a repeatable process for future integrations, setting the stage for continued growth and success.
Acquisitions at Scale
Microsoft Platform
Impact
With the help of RBA, Advantage Solutions was able to make progress on system integration of their backlog of acquired companies. Using RBA’s defined process to help organizations through mergers and acquisitions, we were able to migrate 3000+ users from over 10 organizations to a singular platform of Office 365.