Evolution of GTM Systems After an Acquisition

In June 2021, Bill completed their $2.5B acquisition of Divvy. A big question that always follows is around team consolidation.

Many teams are still necessary to maintain day-to-day operations and drive growth but some are completely redundant.

Back office teams are typically the first to go.

Finance processes can be somewhat unique company-to-company but they are generally standardized enough that you won’t need those 2 Netsuite instances and 2 Zuora instances - just 1 will do - and that typically means ~50% of the staff goes too.

At the time of acquisition, combined headcount across BILL and Divvy was ~1,150.

• 450 employees at Divvy

• 1,100 at BILL

Today, combined headcount is 2,650 (2.3x growth):

• Current Sales team at BILL is 400 (+125 in Support)

• Current Sales team at Divvy is 150 (+40 in Support)

That’s a total Salesforce user base (Sales Cloud + Service Cloud) of 700+.

How has the Business Systems team changed?

Surprisingly, there was very little turnover across the team.

Since the acquisition was announced in June 2021, only a few people have left the Business Systems teams at either company.

Typically, you would expect an acquisition like this to result in some layoffs to an Internal Business Systems team - an acquirer like BILL would retain staff during the consolidation of Divvy’s Salesforce instance into BILL’s Salesforce instance, and then evaluate who is essential.

Why didn’t this acquisition lead to layoffs in GTM Systems?

Because BILL’s Salesforce team was UNDERSIZED - roughly the same as Divvy’s Salesforce team despite BILL being 3x larger.

At the time of acquisition, the Business Systems teams were:

Divvy:

• (2) Salesforce Administrators

• Salesforce Business Analyst

• Head of GTM Systems

BILL:

• VP of Business Systems

• Lead Salesforce Architect

• 1 Salesforce Developer

• 2 Salesforce Admins

In 2022, BILL picked up all 4 members of Divvy’s Salesforce team and added 5 new headcount, including: 1 Salesforce Developer, 1 Salesforce Architect, 2 Salesforce Administrators, and 1 Salesforce Business Analyst.

Unified Team TODAY:

18 people total:

• Head of GTM Systems (ex-Divvy)

• Head of CX Tools & Automation

• Sr. Director, People Ops Tech

• Head of Salesforce Engineering

• Sr. Manager, Finance Systems

• 1 Billing Systems Manager

• 5 Salesforce Administrators (2 ex-Divvy)

• 2 Salesforce Business Analysts (1 ex-Divvy)

• 2 Salesforce Developers

• 1 Salesforce Architect

My personal conclusion is that the team is still UNDERSIZED, especially given the scale of their Salesforce utilization.

I’m surprised to see so few Salesforce Engineers on staff given the complex use of Service Cloud and scale of Experience Cloud utilization:

• 700+ internal users across Sales Cloud and Service Cloud

• 4mm external users of Experience Cloud

• Other Tools: Salesforce CPQ; Einstein; Netsuite; Workday

Regardless, this speaks to how acquisitions don’t have to mean downsizing a team and can, in fact, lead to smarter investments.

Internal Tools teams should be the backbone of Go-to-Market infrastructure. When new Leadership comes in, there can be too much focus on eliminating redundancies / costs and not enough on further investment in key areas.

GTM Systems Teams = KEY AREA of business efficiency.

Invest as such.