CIO Landing: Integrated Financial Structure Fuels Merger & Acquisition

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When Santiago first stepped into his financial position at CIO Landing, he started off with "only a spreadsheet."

Within his decade-long tenure, Santiago has revolutionized CIO Landing's financial processes, shifting from manual labor to seamless automation. With a steadfast focus on becoming a top-tier IT Support Provider, CIO Landing is now set on an ambitious path to expand and establish franchises across the United States.

Challenge

As CIO Landing embarked on acquiring a new Managed Service Provider (MSP) of equal size, Santiago Susbielles, Finance Manager, encountered a "really complicated" situation with two ConnectWise PSA instances and two QuickBooks Online (QBO) instances - a truly intricate challenge to navigate.

With the task of managing two companies simultaneously, Santiago delved into crafting a strategic plan to streamline operations. Driven by the pursuit of a more efficient solution, he sought the expertise of Wise-Sync's support team to explore the possibility of consolidating to a single ConnectWise PSA instance and one QBO instance for their collaborative ventures.

Transitioning from managing a mere forty invoices per month with straightforward billing needs for a single company, to taking on a new acquisition and handling up to 200 invoices monthly, each with unique billing requirements and the added complexity of check collection, posed an overwhelming burden of stress, time, and financial strain -

Santiago recognized the urgent need for a comprehensive invoice and payment solution to effectively address these complex obstacles.

Solution

When Santiago reached Wise-Sync's support team, our developers faced this unique challenge head-on.

In addition to consolidating the two ConnectWise PSA instances and two QuickBooks Online instances into a single source of truth, the implementation of WisePay, an automated payment solution, for their acquired company, revolutionized the financial operations at CIO Landing, streamlining the entire process for optimal efficiency.

At that time of their acquisition, CIO Landing was already using Wise-Sync and WisePay, which enabled their company to run paperless. Their newly acquired company, however, did not utilize any processor for automated invoicing or payments - and only received printed checks.

Already knowing the seamless integration of WisePay with Wise-Sync and the flexible month-to-month agreement without any lock-in contracts, Santiago was fast driven to set up WisePay for their acquired company. This innovative two-in-one solution not only promised substantial cost savings for supporting the two newly merged companies, but also assured an all-encompassing solution for streamlining their end-to-end financial operations.

Results

Bolstered merger and acquisition through the provision of a streamlined instance for the surviving entity; from having two instances of ConnectWise PSA and QBO to now, a single source of truth.
No more timely paper check collection for their newly acquired company, instead, payments are received instantly for both companies through payment automation provider WisePay.
Eradicated manual invoicing and payment processing; complete financial automation led to a 75% time reduction.
Invoicing workload slashed from 20 hours down to just five hours each month.

“

When acquiring a new business, having two instances of everything was complicated...

...it was a mess. Your dev team took the challenge, and that was magic for us.

I'm always searching for new vendors and new tools, and then I realized, I could have both the synchronization and the payment portal within the same tool that was Wise-Sync and WisePay.

It saves a lot of money. Well, time is money. The time that I'm not spending on manually processing invoices, is time that I can allocate to refinining and growing other parts of the business -

Now, we can do all of our invoicing in just one day. It's awesome.

Santiago Susbielles
Finance Manager, CIO Landing

The Journey

When Santiago Susbielles first commenced his role as a Finance Controller (later promoted to Head of Finance) at CIO Landing, he began with "only a spreadsheet."

While working remotely in Spain, Santiago worked hard to transform CIO Landing's manual financial operations from being timely and costly, into a streamlined structure that would support the company's ambitious plans to expand.

I always try to automate as many things as possible. I always tell my team, 'Don't focus on just the job or the tasks at hand, think about how we can automate things to work smarter not harder.'

With over a decade of experience leading the Finance department, Santiago has played a crucial role in driving the company's expansion. Today, CIO Landing is a renowned IT Support & Consulting provider headquartered in Northfield, Illinois, with additional offices strategically located in Chicago, IL, and Miami, FL.

Without Wise-Sync, "it would have been impossible."

When buying a second company (BSSI2), CIO Landing were confronted with two separate ConnectWise PSA instances and two QuickBooks Online (QBO) instances, a situation Santiago simply describes as "a mess."

Eager to consolidate operations into a unified entity with a single accounting system, Santiago eagerly sought assistance from the Wise-Sync support team to explore the feasibility of this endeavor. With CIO Landing's successful track record as a Wise-Sync and WisePay user for over a year-and-a-half, Santiago was keen on extending this integration to their newly acquired company.

Despite facing a technical challenge, the Wise-Sync development team embraced the task. They successfully merged the two instances for CIO Landing, creating a streamlined and accurate financial foundation. By simplifying the 'complex' billing requirements and implementing WisePay as their primary payment provider for both companies, CIO Landing were prepared to seamlessly carry on with their operations, now well-equipped to handle a significant increase in business activity.

Last year, the merger was in progress and so I started to think about how we were going to work with two companies at a time because I knew that initially, not everything was going to be in one ConnectWise PSA instance -

It was a mess. We had our clients as they were, and then the other company's clients still within another ConnectWise PSA instance, and I knew there had to be a way to fix this...

I didn't want to have two ConnectWise PSA instances, two QuickBooks Online instances, two everything - no, I needed to do this smarter and Wise-Sync did that -

Otherwise, it would have been impossible.

Without this streamlined solution stack of ConnectWise PSA, QuickBooks Online, Wise-Sync and WisePay, CIO Landing would have spent up to a staggering twenty hours each month on invoicing alone.

Now, Santiago and his team can do all of their invoicing "in just one day," an unlocked capability he describes as simply "awesome."

From paper checks to (mostly) automated payments

From using Wise-Sync and WisePay, CIO Landing was already paperless at the time of acquiring a new company -

This newly acquired company, however, received only printed checks; an outdated payment collection process that proved both timely and unsettling for CIO Landing.

Almost three years ago, CIO Landing had transitioned from a competitor to WisePay. This competitor had not only substantially increased their credit card rates and processing fees, but now required a lock-in contract with a binding yearly agreement -

It was at that point, that Santiago searched for a smarter way when he found Wise-Sync and WisePay. Now, Santiago would follow that same process for their newly acquired company.

These celebrated achievements for CIO Landing didn't halt at the remarkable 75% decrease in invoicing time alone; further time and cost efficiencies were now within reach on the payments front.

Ramping up their invoicing volume from a modest forty to a staggering 200 invoices per month, meant that physically accepting paper checks would not serve as best practice when handling financial transactions. The company recognized the need for an automated payment provider (now for both companies) to ensure prompt and up-to-date payments - and as a macro result, gain real-time insight into their financials; a crucial factor in their ability to scale effectively.

We wasted a lot of time receiving checks in the office.

Most of our team works remotely, and the team that is in Chicago sometimes doesn't make it to the office for a whole week! So, imagine all of these checks sitting in the office. And if it's a loan payment, then that delays the entire process. I said, 'No, we have to change this! No more checks, let's go paperless.' And WisePay facilitated this -

We migrated all of our new clients to WisePay where we could easily navigate this billing portal, and they could now pay electronically.

We went from forty invoices to 200+ per month, can you imagine processing all of these manually?

Please, no!

Even though there are credit card processing fees, it's worth it. Because it saves you money and a lot of time reconciling financial data - time that we can far better spend on other things.

As with any transition, it requires time and patience for all customers to make the switch from paper checks to online payments. While the vast majority of their clients have embraced electronic payments, there are still a few loyal customers who prefer the traditional method - but this amount is dwindling. Santiago confidently affirms that CIO Landing is on track to becoming completely paperless as part of their bold growth strategy.

On the technical support that CIO Landing receives from Wise-Sync and WisePay, Santiago says, "One of the things that truly impresses me, is the amazing support team.'

They are exceptional in every way. There are times I send an email, and by the time I wake up [here in Spain], I already have a reply waiting for me."

Enhanced financial operations fortify CIO Landing's innovative growth strategy

In adhering to a dynamic business growth strategy that includes actively seeking merger acquisitions as part of their overarching franchise model, requires careful preparation.

Now with the solution stack ConnectWise PSA, QuickBooks Online, Wise-Sync and WisePay, which has assured complete end-to-end financial automation, CIO Landing is poised and confident in its business growth trajectory -

In procedurally implementing Wise-Sync and WisePay to support future acquisitions, Santiago Susbielles deems their decision as the obvious choice.

It's a no-brainer.

If you're ready to put your manual accounting tasks on autopilot and take back control of your finances, Wise-Sync's here to make it happen: Get in touch with our friendly team today or book a demo to see how it all works.