Merger integration, then a clean carve-out of the consulting arm.
Two transactions, one team behind the plan: first a merger integration into a larger professional services group, then a clean separation of the consulting entity years later.
- Merger integration, later entity separation · Professional services · Southern Africa
- DayOne+ M&A Tech Advisory
What changed, in numbers.
- 2
- Transactions supported: merger integration and later entity carve-out
- 4-week
- Migration window covering M365, file server, practice and audit data
- Full
- Security uplift: MFA, Conditional Access, EDR, DLP and managed backups
Where the engagement started.
A regional accounting and advisory firm was integrated into a larger professional services group. Years later, the consulting entity had to be separated back out. Both events had to keep client-facing teams productive across Microsoft 365, practice management, audit tooling, network, print and telephony, without disruption to live engagements.
How the work was sequenced.
- 01Treated each transaction as its own programme, but re-used the same governance, cadence and evidence discipline.
- 02Mapped every shared system, licence, credential and data set before any cutover was scheduled.
- 03Kept a single owner accountable across both events so institutional memory did not evaporate between them.
- 04Landed the target end state on a modern, secured Microsoft baseline both times.
What the client was left with.
- Merger: Microsoft 365 consolidation, file-server and practice-management migration, security uplift and network integration.
- Carve-out: independent tenant, identity, audit data extraction, licensing separation and managed services stand-up.
- MFA, Conditional Access, EDR, DLP and managed backups applied in both target states.
- Runbooks for practice, audit and client-facing teams so no billable engagement lost a working day.
Two very different transactions, one team behind the plan each time. Our accountants never lost a working day.
The full narrative, sequencing and lessons, as a PDF.
The PDF covers the challenge, the approach, everything we delivered, measurable outcomes and the lessons the DayOne+ team took from the engagement. No form, no gate. All names, sectors and identifying details have been removed.
What the team took away.
- The value of institutional memory between transactions is only obvious after the second one.
- Practice management and audit data live longer than any tenant. Plan the export before the merger, not after.
- A carve-out is not the reverse of a merger. The controls have moved, the people have moved, the data has grown.
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