Faced with an opportunity to grow via acquisitions, the three principal partners of Alta Via Consulting were initially resolute that a merger was not an option. The company had spent decades helping Department of Defense (DoD) agencies adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and modernize financial processes, but the price of putting clients first meant that running and implementing their own financial and IT systems came second to delivering on the needs of DoD agencies they supported.
However, being forced to balance the company’s own infrastructure priorities against those of its clients led to the consideration of acquisitions as a means of rapidly growing its team, and Alta Via began looking into funding and potential buys.
At the same time, somebody aware of the company’s deep SAP experience since its founding suggested a merger with cBEYONData, a professional services company focused on process automation and data analytics. While Alta Via initially rejected the idea, cBEYONData’s persistence led to a meeting to discuss a possible merger.
The meeting changed everything. The two companies quickly recognized there were synergies and additive benefits beyond a simple merger, leading to a situation where, according to Alta Via’s President Dawn Sedgley, “One plus one does make three.”
Both companies had skills in data warehousing and analytics and business intelligence, but the two served entirely different sets of federal clients, with cBEYONData largely serving the Department of Justice while Alta Via served the DoD. The two companies saw an opportunity to build their own internal infrastructure to underpin further growth driven by exploding demand for their respective core services, along with an expansion of M&A activity in the government contractor space.
With a large number of government legacy systems due for retirement and the relative stability of demand from federal clients even in times of disruption and uncertainty, the market for government services is expanding rapidly. By combining the extensive architecture of cBEYONData and Alta Via’s deep knowledge of SAP, which is widely used in government, the two companies were able to successfully join and grow beyond their respective capabilities. In this case, the whole truly was greater than the sum of its parts.
