OUR APPROACH

Strategy Implementation (Mergers, Acquisition and Divestitures)

VERVE assisted a Fortune 50 client with several transactions, including a $68 Billion acquisition, two $2 Billion divestitures, and an $11 Billion divestiture along with a variety of collaboration and joint venture agreements. Our team of diverse project management consultants assisted in several functional areas, providing subject matter expertise, strategic guidance and additional resources as the client had limited staff to work on supporting the transaction, integration and carve-out activities, while doing their ‘business as usual’ functions.

Financial Project Management: Managed the transition of financials through year-end in compliance with the Transaction Services Agreement (TSA) for a divested entity. Acting as Financial Project Manager, VERVE provided project management oversight and financial expertise in support of major acquisition and resulting asset divestiture. Highlights include:

• • Established a process for implementing Corporate Accounting issues resulting from the divestiture
  • Developed schedules and timetables for international locations to comply with provisions of Transition Services Agreement (TSA)
  • Provided status to management

Manufacturing Integration Project Management: To support the multi-billion dollar acquisition, VERVE was enlisted to guide the client’s project managers to transfer products from the acquired firm’s manufacturing facilities to several global locations. Highlights include:

• • Facilitated a program of 30 divestment and transfer projects for division assets
  • Created project plans, gained local country buy-in, tracked plans, and managed escalations
  • Worked with project teams in the U.S., Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands

Technical Accounting Guidance for Ongoing Business Development Projects: As an interim member of our client’s technical accounting advisory team VERVE reviews transaction contracts to provide accounting guidance and to propose alternative structures to achieve the desired results.  This includes:

• • Providing due diligence support and purchase accounting guidance to divisional operational, financial, and legal staff to help ensure that business and accounting, both internal and external, objectives are met
  • Identifying and analyzing the accounting and reporting issues of acquisitions, divestitures, collaborations, co-promotion and licensing arrangements and strategic investments by reviewing proposals, contracts, term sheets, executive summary memos, and other related documents in addition to holding discussions with appropriate Company personnel

Technical Accounting Lead: VERVE provided leadership on a strategic balance sheet segmentation project VERVE’s role on this highly visible technical accounting and Excel driven initiative included project management, strategy, coordination with the functional groups and technical assistance.

Financial Management for Business Technology Integration: VERVE provides strategic financial management and analyst services for transformational divestiture project activities. This includes:

• • Manage project Transaction Services Agreement (TSA) ongoing cost analysis, estimation, and changes for wind down exit scenarios
  • Develop global methodologies to collect and provide estimates for stranded, dis-synergy, and termination fees & penalties for wind down exit scenarios
  • Establish project processes and global financial reporting for TSA Ongoing, Exit, and De-Integration spend
  • Obtain and track financial costs related to actual, committed, and forecast for project activities
  • Update and track changes to contracts and agreements upon termination of services
  • Address data discrepancies with work stream leads, finance, procurement, and project PMO

Human Resources Project Management: Provide HR management with assistance on various strategic projects including:

• • Project management guidance for global HR systems and processes (payroll and benefits) implementation;
  • Managing HR Readiness/Business Processes for global mobility initiative;
  •  Managing the investor room for transactions including assisting with response research and analysis for investor room questions, and preparing target employee lists for divesting entities

A Fortune 300 client was launching their new SaaS product, however, the project was already in flight and falling behind. They needed a seasoned high caliber project manager with SaaS experience and expert communication and change management skills to help them get back on track and deliver the program on time. VERVE provided project management support with the specific project management and SaaS expertise required and quickly accomplished the following results:

• Project plan work streams were identified and milestones and timelines were solidified from the workstream owners.
• Workstreams included but were not limited to areas such as technology enablement, web channel and provisioning, inside sales, field sales, marketing and communications.
• Risks and dependencies were identified and began being managed.
• The program was launched as scheduled.
• A tiered post launch support program was created and managed successfully.

A Fortune 300 client was undergoing a major business transformation and ERP implementation.  Specifically they needed high caliber support for their PMO, specific project initiatives and their finance and accounting areas. VERVE quickly put a team together and performed the following tasks:

• • Provided project management support for a call center consolidation that resulted in real estate savings as well as headcount and related savings. The project included process identification and documentation, call metric analytics, resourcing requirements and other data. This was critical to ensure the successful closing of the one call center and the successful movement of work to the receiving call center so the receiving call center would be appropriately staffed, trained and had baseline performance metrics on Day 1 of the cutover.
  • Provided project management support that improved the customer experience with the client. The PM support was both as an individual contributor to start and then as a team lead in identifying processes and information to track and automate in regards to customer experience data within the new ERP system implementation.
  • Provided finance, accounting and leasing support that allowed client expertise to spend time on the ERP implementation. The back office support provided was invaluable in allowing the go-live ERP implementation to go ahead as planned.
  • Provided PMO support for the ERP implementation that included business analytics and project management. The support provided was so instrumental in the team achieving their goals that the support expanded into support for order to cash, product modeling and then go-live support to ensure the business was up to speed in terms of where they needed to be in order to do their jobs and execute within the system as designed.

Program Management Support (Merger Integration & Business Transformation)

A privately-held newly acquired healthcare payer claims auditing firm needed integration support after their recent merger and for the re-branding activities they needed to undertake.  Specifically they needed high caliber technical and marketing program/project managers as well as business analysts to ensure their success and support their newly formed Program Management Office (PMO).

VERVE assembled a team of program and project managers quickly to support their strategic initiatives, compliance requirements and met their very tight deadlines.  Our combined activity led to an increase in structured project management discipline which resulted in the delivery of many technical projects,  a successful rebranding launch of a newly merged entity and the resultant successful IPO.

Common Data Platform Model: One of VERVE’s technical program managers was instrumental in the successful pilot delivery of a common data platform model which was a mission-critical initiative to the business.  This new platform now allows for greater data ingestion efficiency and cost reductions. It is now the platform of the future for our client.

VERVE’s security team worked on establishing integrated control frameworks, establishing information security and privacy policies, identifying gaps with current practices and establishing metrics for improvement.

PMO Support and Reporting: VERVE’s business analyst worked with our client’s PMO establishing executive dashboards, communications, issue/risk management documents, scheduling and stakeholder status presentations. Other VERVE project managers were instrumental in developing the client’s internal project managers regarding estimating resources, developing scope documents, creating charters and dashboards and reviewing project milestones.  They also supported the client’s agile implementation leading stand up meetings, sprint reviews and the updating of SOP’s. Another of VERVE’s program managers worked with IT in establishing a service delivery structure (quality, governance etc.) as well as their network security architecture.

Technical project management: VERVE’s project managers supported a variety of software development initiatives, including compliance, application development as well as multiple integration projects.

Strategic Sourcing: Our consultants assisted with the implementation of a new contracts administration system and the structuring of this critical area to increase cost reductions and standardizations.

Marketing and Branding: VERVE led the effort for over 15 different workstreams as the main interface between the firm hired to create the branding and our client’s management team.  A new branding of the two recently merged companies was released on time and on budget.