Selected engagement
Insurance · Enterprise CarriersMergers & IntegrationShared Services Integration Advisor + Facilitator
I was brought in to help two enterprise carriers build genuinely shared HR, finance, and IT functions. I led the audit of how each company actually operated, designed the co-design process for the new way of working, and ran the communication and alignment work that consolidation usually neglects.
The turning point
Both organizations had reached a moment familiar to many under financial pressure: real efficiencies were sitting in plain sight, but capturing them required organizational change, not accounting.
Leadership had identified HR, finance, and IT as prime candidates for shared services. The financial logic was sound.
What was not clear was whether two distinct organizations could actually operate as one in these areas without losing the trust of the people doing the work.
What was at stake
My role
I partnered with both organizations to move from concept to functioning shared services.
I worked from a simple belief: efficiency gains do not stick if the people affected by them are not part of building them. My role covered both the process design and the harder cultural work.
How I approached the work
Not just the org charts, but the informal workarounds, the systems each team trusted, and the processes that had quietly become how things are done over years of independent operation.
Some processes could be combined, some needed redesigning from scratch to serve both organizations, and some differences were meaningful enough to keep. Picking one company's way and imposing it rarely survives contact with real employees.
Representatives from both organizations defined the adopted processes together. When people from both sides shape the new way of working, adoption stops being something done to them.
Regular forums where employees from both companies could ask questions and hear the same answers, transparency about what was and was not yet decided, and visible participation from leadership on both sides. The goal was not to eliminate anxiety but to keep it from being filled in by guesswork.
The work
Audit and discovery
Mapped how each company actually ran HR, finance, and IT, including informal practice.
Identifying the shared path
Determined what to consolidate, what to redesign, and what differences to preserve.
Co-design working sessions
Cross-organizational representatives defined the adopted processes going forward.
Communication and alignment
Structured forums, transparency about open decisions, and visible leadership participation on both sides.
Transition to shared operations
Moved from parallel, duplicative functions to shared operations with a common vocabulary.
What changed
Tangible outputs
Organizational shifts
The takeaway
The technical work of integration is the straightforward part. Whether shared services hold is decided by whether people recognize the new processes as their own.
Cecilia Stanton Adams
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If your organization is navigating a transition, integration, strategic shift, or alignment challenge, let's talk about what this moment requires.