EdTech firm overcomes alignment and migration issues with digital transformation

Our client, an industry leader in educational technology (EdTech), is a private equity-backed portfolio company providing assessment, practice and data-driven solutions for educators worldwide. Following years of growth and acquisitions, the client operated with disconnected systems and region-specific processes that limited scalability. RSM worked with the client to lead a multiphase transformation focused on unifying customer engagement, streamlining operations and establishing a single source of truth across systems to lay the foundation for sustained global growth.

By working with a single provider to transform several key functions, the client increased efficiency and established a consistent vision for ongoing growth and success.

The challenge: Fragmentation after growth

The client rapidly grew through strategic acquisitions, resulting in multiple disconnected systems and inconsistent processes across business units and geographies. Complexity extended beyond system sprawl. Fragmentation created inefficiencies for sales, services and accounting teams; reduced leadership visibility into accurate enterprise data; and required manual reconciliation across systems. This delayed decision making and limited the organization’s ability to respond to business challenges in real time.

As an EdTech provider, the client frequently sells at the district level while fulfilling subscriptions, pricing and billing at the individual school level. Manual billing, revenue recognition, tax and close processes required significant effort across multiple systems. As the organization continued to scale globally, these workarounds became increasingly difficult to sustain. Company leadership recognized the need to unify critical business processes and applications to support global operations while delivering consistent experiences for both customers and internal stakeholders.

While the initial project scope encompassed enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) system selection and implementation for the client’s North American operations, it quickly grew to include several additional processes and applications.

“The project's original intent was to improve end-to-end processes that touch both CRM and ERP systems,” says RSM US Director Jacob Hulsey. “Through discovery and through mid-project acquisitions, the scope quickly expanded to better accommodate the client's global expansion.”

Strategic goals for transformation: Elevating connectivity and scalability

The transformation strategy aimed to reconnect people, process and technology across the enterprise, unify operational and financial data, and future-proof the client’s operating model for continued growth. 

Given the organization’s acquisitive strategy, the solution was intentionally designed to operate in a dynamic environment capable of adapting to new business models, geographies, operating models and product offerings without disrupting the broader enterprise architecture.

RSM and the client adopted a business-led, technology-enabled strategy built on three pillars:

Discovery and design: Building alignment before the build

Rather than designing a net‑new solution in isolation, RSM began by closely evaluating the client’s existing processes across acquired entities. Teams worked collaboratively with client stakeholders to determine which processes should be retained, refined or retired and ensured alignment before entering the build phase.

During the discovery and design phases, RSM worked closely with client stakeholders to capture business requirements, perform fit-gap assessments against future-state systems and applications, develop future-state process flows, and design the future-state system architecture. The work focused on lead-to-cash processes, including supporting systems, integrations, data flows and related business capabilities.

A critical outcome of discovery was the recommendation to implement new Salesforce and NetSuite environments. This approach eliminated legacy data constraints, and enabled redesign of foundational elements like billing architecture and the global chart of accounts that would have otherwise limited automation and scalability over time.

Together with RSM’s discovery‑first approach and supported by strong client sponsorship, the teams designed a streamlined, scalable architecture that worked seamlessly across upstream and downstream systems while minimizing rework later in the program.

Technology stack: Modern solutions for a unified enterprise

Before the project, the client operated five ERP systems and three CRM platforms; today, it runs on one ERP and one CRM solution. The transformation introduced a robust, best-in-class technology ecosystem, with Salesforce for CRM, NetSuite for ERP, ZoneBilling for advanced billing, Kyriba for treasury and cash management, Vertex for global transaction tax determination, and Boomi for application integration and data flow synchronization. Additional integrations with Recurly and Shopify ensured that all customer transactions, both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) flow into NetSuite as a single system of record, enabling comprehensive enterprise‑wide reporting.

This new ecosystem establishes seamless data flow across customer, financial and operational systems and allows the client to maintain real-time inventory visibility while ensuring revenue-generating activities captured in Salesforce are accurately processed downstream in NetSuite—supporting both North American and global operations.
 
After implementing the new processes and technology applications, the RSM team configured and tested the end-to-end solution in accordance with technical design specifications, completed additional rounds of data conversion and developed organizational management activities to drive user adoption.

Impact and outcomes: Unlocking efficiency, visibility and growth

The transformation project delivered measurable business value across the organization.

From an executive perspective, consolidation into a single ERP environment replaced extended close cycles and manual consolidation with real‑time financial visibility in addition to the strategic advantage this transformation provided among competitors in the industry.

For finance and operations teams, automation across billing, amendments and reconciliations shifted effort away from manual processing toward review and exception management.

The flexibility of the unified architecture was demonstrated mid‑implementation when the client acquired a new business with physical inventory requirements. The solution absorbed these new operational needs without the need for the re‑architecture of core systems, enabling both organizations to operate on a shared global platform.

Connected systems support a seamless customer journey from sales through service, while a repeatable framework for future acquisitions positions the client for continued global expansion.