Apr 2021
Supporting Evergreen Garden Care to grow
Evergreen Garden Care is the leading supplier of garden products outside North America producing and selling high quality garden care products across ten countries. We were instructed by Exponent Private Equity, acting on Evergreen’s behalf, to act as their strategic partner to manage the transition of systems, infrastructure and technology platforms following their acquisition from Scotts MiracleGrow. Given the scale of the business, the need to continue trading without disruption and the need to understand Evergreen’s long term growth ambitions, they needed an experienced and trusted consultancy to deliver an effective, seamless and wholescale transition of their IT.
Executive Mergers & Acquisitions Consultant
A strong team, providing a seamless service
The work, led by our dedicated M&A team, drew on consultants from across our business. From project managers and an interim CIO, to technical engineers and bespoke software engineers, we delivered a comprehensive transition including:
- Program and project management of the migration of 76 systems used across the business, covering areas such as EDI, manufacturing control and all other administrative functions, and including migration of email and PCs for 600 staff.
- Designing and implementing a new technical architecture and infrastructure.
- Setting up a datacentre and related infrastructure.
- Managing the transition service agreement with Scotts to ‘keep the lights on’.
- Design and recruitment of an in-house IT team for the business and appropriate service contracts.
- Development of an initial IT strategy for the business.
- Integration of three further businesses acquired during the transition period.
- Support and project management of delivery of a multi-language, multi-location, multi-currency ERP system (SAP S4/HANA), and migration from Scotts’ legacy SAP system.
A platform for continued success
Evergreen Garden Care now has standalone, reliable, and cost-effective systems and infrastructure, able to operate efficiently and scale to support the organisation’s growth. This was all achieved in 15 months during the transition period, whilst the business continued to trade.
"Waterstons was committed to delivering the best possible results for Evergreen Garden Care from the beginning. We were impressed by how quickly the team understood our business needs and mobilised the right people with the right skills to deliver what we needed and when. The level of detail, care and diligence shown throughout the transition process which allowed us to carry on ‘business as usual’ was outstanding."
Martin Lofnes
Evergreen CFO