Enabling a scalable acquisition strategy through digital transformation

TriStruX is not just your average digital infrastructure service provider; it’s a powerhouse roll-up that sets the stage for an electrifying revolution in the world of connectivity. With a client roster that boasts major carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile, TriStruX is at the forefront of network deployment capabilities for all things wireless, wireline, and professional services. Shortly before TriStruX engaged Inspire11, they were recapitalized by a Private Equity firm to supercharge the company’s growth by acquiring peers with complementary service offerings in domestic urban markets.

The opportunity

TriStruX recognized that their legacy operational processes required a large amount of manual administrative work to manage their national workload. They also recognized that their acquisition strategy would not scale well without finding ways to significantly improve efficiency of Selling, General, and Administrative expenses (SG&A) and Indirect Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) associated with managing their workload. Additionally, TriStruX experienced a lack of granular visibility into Direct COGS associated with project work, which left them blind to information that would help them improve their unit economics and job performance as they served customers. Their legacy systems and processes left the finance team with an unsustainable workload and their target closing date was not feasible as they absorbed additional companies.

What we did

TriStruX engaged Inspire11 to assess their operational and technology landscape and provide recommendations on how to achieve more efficient scale as they grow through organic success and acquisition. Inspire11 performed an initial 8-week assessment to dissect the operations, processes, and tech stack and plan a transformation program that helps the organization use modern technologies to maximize scale and EBITA growth from acquisitions while minimizing SG&A and project delivery cost growth associated with acquisitions of new businesses.

Inspire11 developed a digital and data transformation strategy for TriStruX that encompassed the following:

Operational Performance Improvement: Improving their operational processes, policies, and procedures by implementing best practices around Project Based Accounting, which allowed them to see and manage projects as individual scopes of work. This served as the foundation for automating workflow to reduce SG&A and Indirect COGS.

ERP Implementation Leadership: Assisted in selecting and implementing a modern cloud based ERP. Redesigned core business processes to digitize key processes and tasks in the ERP, allowing them to collect data on financial performance.

End-to-End Process Automation: Optimized the use of other SaaS products and provided business and tech capabilities that supported their new process landscape. Built over 50+ Microsoft Logic Apps-based integrations and automated process steps to reduce manual data entry and automate the end-to-end business processes of executing a job.

Modern Data and Analytics: Leveraging Microsoft’s Azure Synapse, Data Factory, and Tableau to build out a Modern Data Architecture that democratized data and access to analytics across the organization, leveraging integrated data from all of their operational systems.

Custom Mobile Application: Leveraging Microsoft Azure low/no code solution to build a custom mobile and web application to enable their Field workforce with digital capabilities for managing work, collecting costs estimates and performing other job admin functions.

IT Organization & Infrastructure Build Out: Supported the CIO’s in building an IT organization that could support and continually improve modern digital and data solutions.