Talent & Retention Insights

How Cloud Solutions Company AHEAD Leveraged illumyx to Improve Speed-to-Integration

The Rundown

  • AHEAD experienced major growth between 2019 and 2020, acquiring six companies. To support their continued M&A growth strategy, they needed to establish a cultural integration framework, ensuring cultural compatibility and creating seamless M&A onboarding experiences.
  • AHEAD established an Integration Management Office to lead M&A integration activity. To provide further support, illumyx, a People Analytics and Culture Consultancy, was brought on as an additional partner to measure cultural similarities and differences.
  • illumyx developed a custom survey to measure AHEAD’s company values and incorporate those values into an M&A culture comparison assessment for incoming acquisitions. This led to improved integration effectiveness.

“The data helped us learn from our past so we could make better decisions about future acquisitions.”

Kristin Supancich, AHEAD Chief People Officer

About AHEAD

AHEAD, a cloud solutions company, offers strategic consulting and managed services to enterprises looking to transform digitally. Their offerings include cloud, security, data, and automation.

It’s people-focused vision strives to make an extraordinary impact on their industry, clients, and within their business. Through this, they seek to make each team member’s career with AHEAD the most impactful of their life, challenging them to solve complex problems, and empowering them to learn and apply new ideas in their work and in their community.

Cultural Integration Isn’t Easy

In 2019 and 2020, AHEAD saw major transformation within their own organization, acquiring six companies.

This level of growth required structures in place to create seamless M&A experiences.

“With our first round of acquisitions in 2019, we had need for a more structured integration strategy and found ourselves becoming reactive,” said Kristin Supancich, AHEAD’s Chief People Officer. “illumyx established credibility quickly when their measurement tool picked up on the cultural differences that were giving us the biggest headaches. The data helped us learn from our past so we could make better decisions about future acquisitions.”

Merging companies comes with a lot of structural and cultural adjustments. Without a proactive culture integration strategy, many integrations can result in friction and run the risk of failure.

In order to fully grasp culture integration, companies need to have the following information:

  • Relationship Navigation: Do individuals know who to go to for information in the organization?
  • Sense of Belonging: Do individuals feel a strong sense of belonging within the organization?
  • Learning Processes & Systems: Do individuals know how to utilize the organization’s processes and systems to get work done?

To provide guidance, AHEAD established an M&A Integration Management Office and partnered with illumyx, a People Analytics and Culture Consultancy, to measure culture similarities and differences between companies and effectively integrate and find value from acquisitions.

The Solution

Successful integrations involve clear and measurable data to better understand pain points. illumyx utilized their Values Scorecard and Culture Comparison Tool to solve AHEAD’s cultural integration challenges.

The two solutions allowed illumyx to develop a custom survey for AHEAD in order to proactively identify cultural integration challenges with newly acquired companies and develop communication plans to streamline transitions. The survey showcased nine integration indicators to track integration progress.

Each time AHEAD acquired a new company, illumyx would survey their employee base within one week to get a true baseline comparison of how they compared with AHEAD’s culture. Once the surveys were complete, AHEAD’s Integration Management Office (IMO) and directors would review to create targeted integration plans.

Business Impact

The insightful data illumyx provided on cultural integration, allowed AHEAD to minimize disruption associated with integration by 50%.

Before partnering with illumyx, AHEAD took around two years for culture integration. However, once provided with the right data and insights AHEAD could effectively integrate cultures within 12-18 months. This improved speed to integration by 33-50% on average.

Moving forward, AHEAD will have the proper cultural integration strategies in place to make future merges seamless. This will allow the consulting company to focus more on accelerating their client’s path to digital transformation.

Let us help your leaders lead your organization

Contact us today to discuss how bringing data-driven insights can help transform your organization’s culture.

To learn more visit illumyx.com or reach out at contact@illumyx.com.

Picture of Steve Utech

Steve Utech

Steve’s life mission is to unlock the mysteries of complex human interactions to make people’s work and personal relationships more meaningful, productive, and satisfying. All things niche and complex are food for his ADHD brain. He’s a geek at heart with irreverent humor, but also has a deep love of people. An experienced leader in the areas of culture optimization, organizational effectiveness, and team development, Steve is the visionary and founder of illumyx. His background in both the hard sciences and the art of family dynamics allows him to take a behavioral and systematic approach to organizational change and transformation. He has worked with Fortune 1000 organizations and executives in a variety of sectors to help them optimize their culture and achieve results. Steve holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Denver in Colorado and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. An adventurer at heart, Steve spends his free time exploring nature with his 4 kids and anyone up for testing their limits. He enjoys rock climbing, backpacking, and finding brief moments of rhythm out on the dance floor. Above all, he enjoys seeing people grow and develop by giving them the freedom to explore and try new things. As someone once put it, “Steve makes it safe to be dangerous.”
Picture of Steve Utech

Steve Utech

Steve’s life mission is to unlock the mysteries of complex human interactions to make people’s work and personal relationships more meaningful, productive, and satisfying. All things niche and complex are food for his ADHD brain. He’s a geek at heart with irreverent humor, but also has a deep love of people. An experienced leader in the areas of culture optimization, organizational effectiveness, and team development, Steve is the visionary and founder of illumyx. His background in both the hard sciences and the art of family dynamics allows him to take a behavioral and systematic approach to organizational change and transformation. He has worked with Fortune 1000 organizations and executives in a variety of sectors to help them optimize their culture and achieve results. Steve holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Denver in Colorado and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota. An adventurer at heart, Steve spends his free time exploring nature with his 4 kids and anyone up for testing their limits. He enjoys rock climbing, backpacking, and finding brief moments of rhythm out on the dance floor. Above all, he enjoys seeing people grow and develop by giving them the freedom to explore and try new things. As someone once put it, “Steve makes it safe to be dangerous.”
Speak to Our Team
Speak to Our Team
Max Kresch

Max finds creative problem solving deeplyfulfilling is highly disciplined in his approach to research. He brings an advanced mathematics background to illumyx with significant experience in machine learning techniques, computer programming, and complex statistical analysis.

 

Max has experience working on complex Department of Defense projects and he recently transitioned his career into social science research. An erstwhile lecturer on data science at the University of Wisconsin, Max is gifted at communicating complex topics in easy-to-understand ways. Max assists the team in survey analysis and reporting and provides oversight on research design and analysis.


A father of two with a passion for music. In his free time, you’ll find him at a local park with his kids, cruising on his rollerblades, or jamming on his guitar with one of several bands he plays in. 

Max Kresch, PhD

Senior Data Scientist

Andrew Fleck

Andrew (Drew) Fleck, PhD, is a results-oriented organizational leader, certified executive coach, behavioral scientist, consultant, and entrepreneur. Drew is driven to add value to peoples’ lives by helping them become more self-sufficient. No matter what role he plays, he focuses on helping clients build strategic foresight into their organizations. He is a natural collaborator who looks for opportunities to partner and build-up others’ skill, knowledge, and confidence.

 

Drew is highly pragmatic and objective with a unique ability to think clearly under pressure. We can thank the US Air Force for that trait.  His studies and practical experience make him an expert in leadership, learning, organization design, organization development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Over his career, he performed a number of strategic roles that aligned him with his love for travel and learning about different people and cultures.  He has a reputation for transforming organizational systems from a reactionary transactional approach to a proactive strategic approach.

 

Drew started his career in High Tech, but has since worked across a variety of industry and government sectors. Drew holds Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Human and Organizational Systems from Fielding Graduate University and a Master’s in Management and Organizational Behavior from Silver Lake College.

Andrew Fleck, Ph.D.

Chief Behavioral Scientist

Kristy Krautkramer

Kristy is a highly organized, strategic thinker and planner. She helps bring focus and levity to the nerd kingdom at illumyx. Committed and caring are two words that describe her best and she has endless energy to support projects and causes she believes in. Her background in music, teaching, and finance brings greater efficiency and harmony to illumyx’ processes and team interactions.

 

Kristy leads operations for the illumyx team, specializing in administrative functions that include finance, HR, and employee onboarding. Her love for order and accuracy frequently find her leading qualitative analysis projects for illumyx.  A former educator, Kristy has a Master’s degree in Education from St.Norbert College.  


Kristy is the mother of four boys. She often unwinds by hosting large gatherings for family and friends, having a good laugh, enjoying a glass of wine (or a swig of tequila), and diving into niche romance novels.

Kristy Krautkramer, M.A.​

Business Specialist & Qualitative Research Analyst

Dan Ritter

Dan is a data geek with a passion for computational social science and its applications in the workplace. Dan has never been a fan of the left-brain vs right-brain dichotomy–he is a dedicated all-brainer. He believes in the power of data to help us better understand human behavior at scale, and also that a healthy dose of humanity is required to accurately interpret data and apply insights with wisdom and tact.

 

Two of his favorite quotes sum up his approach to work:

 

“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion,” W. Edwards Demming

 

“...people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” Maya Angelou.


In his free time, Dan enjoys wilderness camping with his family, reading, and tinkering with anything that can be taken apart. A lifelong learner, he holds a BA in Education, is currently pursuing his MS in Data Science, and has amassed a growing collection of certificates from fine institutions around the country.

Dan Ritter

Director of People Analytics

Steve Utech

Steve’s life mission is to unlock the mysteries of complex human interactions to make people’s work and personal relationships more meaningful, productive, and satisfying. All things niche and complex are food for his ADHD brain. He’s a geek at heart with irreverent humor, but also has a deep love of people. An experienced leader in the areas of culture optimization, organizational effectiveness, and team development, Steve is the visionary and founder of illumyx.

 

His background in both the hard sciences and the art of family dynamics allows him to take a behavioral and systematic approach to organizational change and transformation. He has worked with Fortune 1000 organizations and executives in a variety of sectors to help them optimize their culture and achieve results. Steve holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Denver in Colorado and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota.

 

An adventurer at heart, Steve spends his free time exploring nature with his 4 kids and anyone up for testing their limits. He enjoys rock climbing, backpacking, and finding brief moments of rhythm out on the dance floor.

 

Above all, he enjoys seeing people grow and develop by giving them the freedom to explore and try new things. As someone once put it, “Steve makes it safe to be dangerous”.

Steve Utech, MSW

Founder, CEO, and Director of Consulting​

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