Summary

TrustMe.ai worked with a manufacturing and distribution company to help them with merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions. This case study illustrates how companies can utilize TrustMe.ai’s solution for M&A due diligence to evaluate a target company’s software security and productivity risks before an acquisition as well as manage optimization and governance, security posture, and development efficiency post-acquisition to bring the companies together successfully without affecting customer satisfaction. 

TrustMe.ai allows both acquirer and acquisition target to stay ahead of the constant risk and posture requirements, improve their efficiency with timely software delivery, and avoid potential security risks.

The Challenge

The company serves a diverse customer base of manufacturers and distributors, ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to large multinational corporations. It provides distribution and manufacturing solutions and continuously seeks to enhance its portfolio with new acquisitions. This creates challenges for effective due diligence and integrating the target company when it decides to acquire it. Another challenge is maintaining a good customer experience while integrating target companies with secure software and improved productivity. It needed to analyze the productivity and efficiency of its development team and predict development project achievement based on historical data for better estimates.  As a manufacturing and distribution supply chain company, it works with multiple customers, vendors, and partners, so it is imperative that it also ensure that the software it delivers to its customers is secure and vulnerability-free.

Results

Before the TrustMe.ai deployment, the manufacturing software company used different solutions for due diligence, used manual processes to calculate development productivity, and didn’t have insights into team efficiency. With the TrustMe.ai platform, they could complete the software code analysis and deliver a comprehensive assessment and recommendations in 48 hours, enabling a faster close of the acquisition target.  After post-LOI, TrustMe.ai equipped them with better visibility of their security risks, developer productivity, and predictability of current projects, empowering them to gain a deeper understanding of their business and assess their overall business health. By implementing TrustMe.ai’s Risk and Security Posture Management solution, they expedite their due diligence process and improve manufacturing and distribution software resiliency by minimizing security risks, optimizing productivity, and ensuring efficient continuity of operations. The company enhanced its trust with its target company and ecosystem, as well as faster due diligence, proactive risk management, and productivity enhancement, resulting in significant cost savings for them.

Conclusions

By leveraging TrustMe.ai’s all-in-one risk and security solution, the company made a more informed acquisition decision for the target company. It addressed development productivity, efficiency, and cybersecurity challenges, safeguarding its digital assets and client data. TrustMe.ai allowed the manufacturing software company to not only improve its M&A due diligence but also better serve its customers with timely specialty manufacturing and distribution software delivery and secure software distribution, contributing to its overall success and growth.

Background

The manufacturing software company offers purpose-built, mission-critical Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), and SPC (Statistical Process Control) software solutions to its specialty manufacturing and distribution customers.  They serve customers globally with over 2500 customers to provide solutions that streamline complex processes, optimize operations visibility and throughput, and drive improved quality, profitability, and revenue growth.

The company’s end-to-end workflow software uses automation, seamless integration, and real-time data to streamline plant scheduling, order management, quality control, sales order forecasting and pricing, e-commerce, and delivery.  The company is very aggressive with mergers and acquisitions, with multiple M&A deals each year. They were looking for adequate due diligence on targeted software companies in their industry and aimed to accelerate the due diligence process, close transactions, and prepare for integrations.

The TrustMe Solution

The company explored the TrustMe.ai all-in-one risk and security posture management solution, recognizing the importance of the due diligence process both during the LOI (letter of Intent) phase for security risks and post-LOI to measure productivity and efficiency. After careful consideration, they partnered with TrustMe.ai to do due diligence on the target company and optimize their software development by providing insights on development team productivity, project predictability, and security risk assessment for the post-LOI phase.

The company was researching a solution that would give them adequate due diligence on the target company’s security risks, a holistic view of R&D efficiency, and security risks that executives and the board of directors could consume. They wanted an affordable solution with dedicated experts to help them in their M&A journey and provide operational excellence for their customers. They were delighted with the TrustMe.ai solution for thorough security risk assessment and post-LOI with continuous monitoring to get a pulse on their business and react to issues. It appealed to them with an easy-to-use dashboard with a holistic view and data correlation with meaningful insights. 

During the due diligence process, TrustMe.ai worked with the target company to find gaps in security risks and provide mitigation actions so that they could resolve them during their integration phase.  It was beneficial for them to have a continuous monitoring solution to obtain actionable insights into security risks, productivity, and efficiency. TrustMe.ai deployed a solution with minimal effort from the company and provided meaningful results that allowed them to make a more informed,data-driven decision on acquisition decisions.