From acquisition to autonomy, tech carve-out a success for Levande.

Case Study
January 31, 2025

Industry

Private Equity, Health and Wellbeing

Our role

Upskilling, culture shift, and tech self-sufficiency transformation.

Microsoft D365 Finance and Operations, Azure, Defender, Sentinel

Tom Bowman

Partner, PwC Australia

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Tracey Kennair

Partner, Microsoft Alliance Lead, PwC Australia

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Levande, recently launched by a global private equity firm, is a leading retirement living provider in Australia, housing over 9,000 residents across 58 villages with plans to develop a further 1,300 new units. Levande is redefining living for seniors, through vibrant neighborhoods for modern, independent Australians.

We are excited to announce that Levande and PwC Australia won Gold at the 2024 ISG Paragon Awards in the category of Excellence for outstanding delivery by a service provider. These awards celebrate the ongoing transformation of the sourcing industry partnerships with new solutions and technologies.

The challenge

Divestments are inherently complex. The technology carve-out – separating and transferring technology assets from one business entity to another – is particularly intricate. Both entities need to operate independently and effectively after the divestiture, with minimal disruption in the process.

We undertook far more than just a carve-out for Levande; we staged a complete technology transformation. More than 90% of the original Stockland systems could not be reused as they were not part of the transaction. We had to create brand new systems and processes, concurrently training over 300 former Stockland employees who moved over to Levande.

Aside from the strict legal timeline of a 12-month completion as per the transitional service agreement, the final challenge was not to disrupt Levande’s retirement residents – over 9,000 across 58 communities.

The how

PwC is known as a business value integrator by Microsoft, prompting an introduction to Levande. For a transaction of this magnitude, we quickly established that they needed a transition strategy, technology divestiture as well as a future technology roadmap.

To improve the chances of a successful separation, it’s important to consider the people affected and organisational structures in addition to technology. From the start we took a holistic, human-centric approach, considering all people, policies and procedures, to find solutions that would best work for Levande. We brought in subject matter experts from across aged care, health care and real estate to make sure that the solutions aligned with the unique challenges and intricacies of the sectors.

PwC crafted its Strategy-to-Transformation framework by collaborating and integrating various lines of service and vendors. From the beginning, we used guiding principles on what needed to be built and how it needed to function. One of Levande's principles was leveraging their existing technology stack, Microsoft. We also used our bespoke accelerators and innovative technologies to transform their infrastructure, ease data migration, and streamline their data integration and reporting.

Microsoft Azure supported secure and systematic data carve-out. A unified Data Platform with end-to-end automation, built in advanced analytics supported the team to streamline their processes and view data and valuable information in real time across multiple systems and functions. This was the ideal showcase scenario of leveraging Levande’s existing technology infrastructure and Microsoft licensing while refining it with meticulously designed policies and procedures.

ERP systems are critical to managing day-to-day business activities, such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, and supply chain operations. Microsoft's' Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations was their first choice, in alignment with Levande's existing investment in the Microsoft technology stack.

Together, we decided on an 80% out-of-the-box approach to minimise expensive customisation and speed up the implementation. However, we still successfully fine-tuned the solution to make sure it was tailored to Levande’s business needs, cultures, and regulatory frameworks.

As a follow-on project, we also created Levande's Cybersecurity Strategy and deployed security monitoring tools Microsoft Defender suite and the Microsoft Sentinel SIEM. We took them from a NIST cybersecurity maturity score of 1.17 to 1.6 in a short timeframe and provided an 18-month roadmap of how to achieve the desired score of 3.0.

We went live on schedule and on budget. From planning and tech discovery, through to design, build, test, final operating model and launch within 12 months, we successfully met the terms of the transitional service agreement. All without causing disruption to Levande’s more than 9,000 retirement residents across 58 communities.

Over 12 months, PwC helped Levande and its vendors through a digital and cultural transformation that included upskilling its people, changing culture, and becoming more self-sufficient in managing new, technology-based business processes. It is a far cry from old systems and procedures.

The new data driven approach was readily adopted when PwC showed Levande how the new platform can support scalability and fuel genuine business growth.

The full carve out transformation and technology blueprint was successfully received. Today, the organisation stands ready to embrace its future with the tools, strategies and insights they need to flourish.