A Case Study in Mergers and Acquisitions
Affinipay "Better Together" initiative enables growth through cross-selling
After a series of mergers and acquisitions, AffiniPay found itself with 6 separate payment products - and 6 separate tech stacks. Behind that were dozens of data sources, applications, and processes that needed to be rewired. AffiniPay partnered with New York-based technology consultancy Orion Global Solutions to turn this challenge into a great business opportunity. This story describes how they did it.
AffiniPay Culture
Like its client base of professional services firms, AffiniPay values complex problem-solving and client services. At the same time, it values efficiency and innovation, which motivated them to bring all their software products into a unified platform.
Why Now
TA Associates had recently acquired AffiniPay, which was comprised of 6 distinct software products, some acquired through its own previous acquisitions. Growth, mergers, and acquisitions meant complexities that had to be addressed.
Other Things to Note
The AffiniPay project is the beginning of an ongoing digital transformation journey, that began by creating the "Better Together" platform. The success of this phase has paved the way for future growth and even more impact on the professional services industry.
The Project
AffiniPay is the leading provider of professional software solutions in North America. Their commitment to deep customer understanding and vertical specialization is unique and has led to a diverse portfolio of web applications, APIs, and services.
But AffiniPay's success also led to technology growing pains.
After completing several acquisitions - and being acquired themselves by private equity firm TA Associates, AffiniPay recognized the need to truly merge and not just run under one legal structure. Bringing these companies' processes and technologies together would open up a great opportunity to understand their clients more fully, and to offer them additional products they would find valuable.
Knowing they need world-class digital transformation, AffiniPay turned to Orion Global Solutions to level up its technology infrastructure and operations.
Orion's team is led with deep Salesforce-based transformation expertise. The solution Orion discovered included Salesforce Sales Cloud, Tableau, and Workato, as well as a myriad of integrations with other platforms such as Outreach, Intercom, and Workday. Following discussions with Christian Fadel, AffiniPay's Executive Owner - it became clear that AffiniPay was facing a decision challenge. They knew they needed a unified system to manage their diverse operations, from sales and customer service to partnerships and referrals - but more importantly, they needed help deciding what steps to take next.
And so the "Better Together" initiative set out! Orion designed and executed a transition to Salesforce that addressed AffiniPay's critical issues but went much deeper than just providing business logic. Orion also needed to design and execute multiple intensely complex integrations, consolidating tracking and reporting, streamlining workflows for sales and services teams, and centralizing data and processes. With Salesforce at the heart of AffiniPay's operations, they now have a robust, scalable solution that enables them to identify cross-sell opportunities, grow more rapidly, and support future acquisitions.
"for the first time, we now have a singular, unique set of prospects, and we leveraged a center-of-excellence approach as part of this transformation. So now everything comes into a singular funnel, and just based on business rules, gets dispersed to the appropriate teams or individuals." Nathan Pace, EVP Corporate Development and Transformation at AffiniPay
Orion's solution has already started to impact AffiniPay's business positively - and future collaborations are planned. With a centralized, effective platform, AffiniPay can now focus on what they do best: delivering top-tier payment solutions to US professional services.
“Could we have done this without Orion? NO WAY! It would have taken us at least 3 years.”
The Introduction Moment
AffiniPay looked to the expertise of a technology and strategy firm that already knew the financial services industry - Orion was a logical choice. When AffiniPay and Orion met, the question was, "Can Salesforce do what we need - can you make it do what we need?". This gave Orion CEO Yacov Wrocherinksky the opportunity to clarify their approach - Orion is a strategic digital transformation firm first and foremost - Salesforce is the tool that helps them achieve that.
The Moment of Trust
Ultimately, AffiniPay's growth is sales-led - therefore the moment of trust happened when it clicked with AffiniPay's Director of Revenue that Orion knew exactly what it was doing - that it wasn't like other Salesforce firms. AffiniPay threw the entire kitchen sink at Yacov, Dan, and the rest of the Orion team during discovery - multiple web software products, already integrated, and dozens of behind-the-scenes applications, integrations, and automation, from custom MySQL databases to Zendesk to Zapier. They saw that the complexity and volume of integration points didn't scare Orion - on the contrary, they welcomed the opportunity. The more complex the problem set, the more energized Orion became.
The Eureka Moment
The eureka moment came when Orion helped AffiniPay understand that what they faced was essentially a big-picture revenue operations challenge - that the outcome of the project would be an enterprise-wide transformation in how AffiniPay approaches business development, from the executive leadership on down to SDRs. AffiniPay had been a loose aggregate of 6 software products, each led by sales but with different systems, nomenclature, categories, and processes. Orion created a technology ecosystem that merged and unified revenue processes without compromising strategy and innovation.
“We love and embrace extreme complexity - even if it looks like a curveball - that’s where Orion creates value.”
The Red Moment
While the project was successful, it was not without its challenges. One came with a specific marketing automation platform (which we cannot name here) - some of AffiniPay's tech stacks used it; others didn't. Some feared that integrating it into the broad ecosystem could derail Orion's "push-button" launch and force a retreat to a phased approach - with elements of Orion's solution deployed piecemeal. Some suggested eliminating the marketing automation platform altogether. But the Orion team, drawing on their experience in transformation, not only ensured that the platform remained part of AffiniPay's ecosystem - it even allowed it to be used in a new way.
“Working with Orion has truly transformed our approach to cross-selling and business development. Their expertise and partnership have been instrumental in shortening what could have been a three-year internal project to just a matter of months. The investment we made to integrate our front-office systems the right way, leveraging Salesforce and other tools, has proven to be a game-changer. It’s a testament to their commitment to excellence and our willingness to take bold steps for success. I’ve worked with a number of Salesforce consultant firms in my career ... but the partnership with Orion was a home run for us and we continue that partnership today through different engagements. And we’re looking at potentially signing a couple more. ”