Mergers and Acquisitions Case Study: ESO

KEY OUTCOMES:

The Problem:

ESO creates emergency management software used by a plethora of emergency services worldwide. When a company doubles in size, everything from processes to culture tends to break down. Then-CEO Chris Dillie knew that the real key to ESO’s success was not just what they did (their strategy), but how they did it (their culture). 

ESO had begun to face cracks in that culture, however. According to Harvard Business Review, 83% of M&A deals destroy value or produce no discernable value. Integrating newly acquired companies typically weakens the culture, decreases employee engagement, leads to turnover of top talent, increases silos, and slows down execution. ESO wanted their culture to get stronger as they scaled—but their typical methods of company culture integration just didn’t work at the scale they were reaching. 

In short, ESO needed a partner to help streamline their merger and acquisition processes, establish and maintain core principles, and bring new leaders into the fold with as few hiccups as possible. In doing so, they hoped to expand their incredible culture more thoughtfully and sustainably. 

“In fire departments, EMS, hospitals—when you’re in those settings clear communication is very important, and it needs to be timely and it needs to be done right. A business isn’t all that different.” — Chris Dillie, Former CEO

BLUECASE offered multifaceted leadership, strategic, and cultural integration solutions that were added to ESO’s M&A playbook to solve the hard part of acquisitions: people, culture, leadership, and communication. Our services covered strategic planning, company-wide leadership development and group coaching, and targeted CEO and executive coaching as well.

Our solutions aimed to strengthen the existing culture at ESO and help new leadership and employees understand the ESO way. We worked with them to solve key challenges, including how to give effective feedback, how to lead in a way that increases trust and engagement, how to make sure culture continues to be an X-factor for the company that makes ESO a great place to work, and how to create ambassadors for the company’s culture—so everyone is living the values, not just HR.

Our approach was to work within the existing culture of ESO, not change it wholesale—and the result was a much stronger set of tools, mindsets, behaviors, leadership principles, and a shared language that each and every team member could communicate and embody from the top down. This prepared ESO for rapid expansion that kept their culture extraordinary.

The Results:

Since partnering with BLUECASE, ESO has expanded from one office in Austin to offices across the United States, as well as in Northern Ireland, Canada, and multiple remote locations across the globe.

ESO has seen their customer base flourish, growing from 500 to more than 10,000. Their organization has established clear, repeatable, and scalable merger and acquisition processes to overcome the typical challenges companies face while expanding. Now, after more than 13 acquisitions, their company has expanded from 50 to more than 500 employees—all without losing the qualities that led to their success in the first place.

READY FOR SUCCESS?

If you’re scaling quickly, and noticing silos, execution slowing down, miscommunication, a weakening of your core value, a lack of urgency and ownership, entitlement, and a drift toward mediocrity.  BLUECASE can give you a playbook to grow faster, increase profitability, and  improve your culture while growing rapidly. Who knows? You could be our next case study in merger and acquisition success.