Use case · Post-acquisition integration

Two tenants, two agreements. Nobody's sure who owns what.

Microsoft spend is the easiest six figures on the table after a deal - and the hardest thing to untangle by hand. Chronom connects to both tenants, read-only, and puts them side by side in 48 hours: what's duplicated, what's orphaned, what's over-tiered, and what it's costing you every month you wait.

Read-only Access No Credit Card SOC 2 Compliant
2 tenants · 1 view
mapping estates…
contoso.onmicrosoft.com
842
seats
EA · renews June
E5 standard
northwind.onmicrosoft.com
362
seats
CSP · monthly
E3 + add-on stack
Where the two estates collide
Licensed accounts, disabled since close
118 seats · E3 assigned, sign-in blocked
$50,900
Duplicate security add-ons
362 seats · already covered by the group standard
$39,100
Over-tiered seats in the acquired estate
88 seats · premium features never used
$22,200
Shared & resource mailboxes on full licences
46 mailboxes · no interactive sign-in
$19,900
Add-ons the base SKU already covers
74 seats · billed twice across both tenants
$12,400
Reclaimable / year
$0
1,204 seats across both tenants
2 agreements
1 baseline
Sound familiar

The savings are obvious. Getting to them by hand is the problem.

You already know the shape of it: two security stacks doing the same job, contractors still licensed, shared mailboxes on full seats, duplicate add-ons, and a few hundred accounts that belong to people who left at close. Everyone in the room can name the categories. Nobody can name the users, and that's the only version of the list you can act on.

So it drifts. Cleanup gets scheduled behind identity, network and ERP - and every month it waits, you pay for both estates in full.

48 hrs
both tenants mapped, user by user
2 → 1
agreements reconciled into one baseline
0
changes to how acquired teams work
day one

You inherited a tenant you've never seen

A second agreement on a different anniversary. A licensing standard somebody else chose for reasons nobody documented. Admin accounts whose owners left before the deal closed.

the politics

Nobody wants to be the one who breaks it

The acquired team is already nervous. Removing a tool in month two - even a duplicated one - costs more in goodwill than it saves, so everything stays switched on by default.

the pressure

Finance is asking for the synergy number

The honest answer is “we're still mapping it.” That answer has a shelf life of about one board meeting, and IT integration is where everyone expects the easy wins to be.

Fast, easy discovery

Both estates, one picture, before the integration plan is even written

You don't need the tenants merged, the identities consolidated or the agreements aligned first. Chronom reads each tenant as it is today and reconciles them for you.

15 minutes each 01

Connect both tenants read-only

Graph API consent per tenant, read-only. Nothing installed, nothing migrated, no dependency on the identity workstream finishing first.

SOC 2 Type II · nothing is written back
48 hours 02

See the combined estate

Entitlements, add-ons, mailboxes, storage and real feature usage across both tenants, normalised into one view with the overlaps and orphans called out.

duplicates · orphans · over-tiering
week one 03

Bank the easy wins first

Start with what carries no risk - disabled accounts, duplicate add-ons, unlicensed-by-design mailboxes - then work through the judgement calls with the acquired team's input.

optional managed execution
This works before, during or after tenant consolidation. Most teams run it in the first 30 days, when the synergy question is loudest.
No alerts. No open questions.

A cleanup list you can hand to the integration workstream on Monday

Post-deal, the last thing anyone needs is another dashboard to interpret. Every line names the tenant, the users, the change and the money - so it goes straight into the plan.

E3 × 118 · northwind Release
accounts disabled at close
Why it's safe

Sign-in blocked, zero service activity since the deal. Mail and OneDrive content is preserved or reassigned before anything is released.

$51K
recovered spend
Add-on stack × 362 · northwind Fold into the group standard
security & analytics add-ons
Why it's safe

The same capabilities are already entitled under the parent tenant's standard. Nothing is switched off - the duplicate line item stops.

$39K
recovered spend
E5 × 88 E3 + Defender P1
acquired commercial teams
Why it's safe

No Purview, eDiscovery or Entra P2 usage in 12 months. Desktop Office, Teams and calling stay exactly as they are.

$22K
recovered spend
E3 × 46 Shared mailbox, unlicensed
shared, resource & departmental mailboxes
Why it's safe

No interactive sign-in and under the shared-mailbox storage threshold - these never needed a paid seat.

$20K
recovered spend

What you won't be handed

Every line in a Chronom report is a decision with an owner, a SKU and a dollar figure. Nothing is left for you to go and find out.

  • “Low Teams usage detected” - a fact you now have to interpret

  • An alert queue that grows faster than you can triage it

  • A dashboard that hands the analysis back to you

Illustrative figures for an 842 + 362 seat combination. Your report carries your real numbers, per tenant, tied to named users and SKUs.
Two operating modes

Integrate at the pace your risk appetite allows

M&A is the one scenario where the fastest saving and the highest political risk sit on the same line item. Chronom runs in one of two modes so you decide which pressure wins.

Savings-oriented

maximize reclaim

Pull the number as low as the usage evidence allows. Chronom ranks every opportunity by dollar value and shows you the full ceiling before anything is decided.

  • Every downgrade the usage data supports is put on the table

  • Add-ons and overlapping SKUs are consolidated to the cheapest entitlement that still covers real usage

  • Premium tiers are recommended only for the people whose telemetry actually justifies them

Pick this when The deal thesis included IT synergies with a number attached, and you need the maximum defensible reclaim across both estates as quickly as it can be evidenced.

Security-oriented

guardrails first

Keep every security and compliance control exactly where it is, and optimize within those boundaries. Savings are smaller - and nobody has to defend a weakened posture.

  • Your security baseline is a hard boundary: Defender, Entra P1/P2, Purview, DLP and retention stay where policy requires

  • Compliance-scoped users, admins and privileged accounts are excluded from downgrade entirely

  • Savings come only from seats and add-ons that sit outside the guardrails

Pick this when Diligence is still open, the acquired org has its own compliance obligations, or you've committed to leaving their controls intact until integration completes. Guardrails hold; savings come from around them.
You set the mode - per tenant, per department, per group. Chronom operates inside the boundaries you define and never proposes anything outside them.
Nobody changes how they work

The acquired team keeps every tool they had yesterday

Month two after a deal is the worst possible time for someone to lose Visio, find their Power BI reports gone, or get an email asking them to justify their licence. None of that is part of this.

  • No “please justify your licence” email to the business

  • No survey, no self-service reclaim portal, no chasing managers for sign-off

  • No app someone opens on Monday to find missing

Cost integration finishes quietly, in the background, while the people you just acquired get on with their jobs. They never find out it happened - which is the point.

what the user sees unchanged
  • Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint - desktop, not web-only
  • Teams, including meetings, calling and the phone number they already use
  • Power BI reports, dashboards and workspaces they own
  • Visio, Project and the niche tools a handful of people genuinely need
  • OneDrive and SharePoint content, permissions and sync
what finance sees repriced
E5 + Power BI Pro add-on E5

Power BI Pro is already inside E5 - the add-on was billing the same capability twice. The reports keep working. The only thing that moved was the line item.

Continuous, not one-and-done

Integration takes months. The scanning runs the whole way through.

During integration, seats move weekly: migrations, re-licensing, new starters, TSA users falling away. A one-off snapshot is stale in a fortnight.

continuous

Watch both estates until there's one

Every scan covers each tenant until consolidation is done, so double-licensing during migration windows gets caught in days rather than at the next invoice.

pre-purchase

No extras bought during the scramble

Before anyone buys seats, storage or add-ons for the acquired org, you can see whether the entitlement already exists on the other side of the deal.

renewal-safe

Both anniversaries, tracked

Two agreements means two clocks. Chronom keeps a defensible seat count against each one, so neither renewal or true-up lands on a number nobody prepared for.

repeatable

Ready for the next deal

If you acquire again, the process is already in place: connect the new tenant, get the combined picture in 48 hours, repeat.

Other use cases

Most teams arrive here for one reason and stay for the others.

One Audit. Real Savings.
Zero Risk.

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Read-only Access No Credit Card SOC 2 Compliant