Inside the merger: Uniting Kleer and Membersy as a dental membership powerhouse

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In May 2024, Kleer and Membersy, two leaders in the dental membership space, were acquired by Charlesbank Capital Partners and merged. 

The combination made total sense: Together, Kleer and Membersy share the mission of expanding access to care for all uninsured and underinsured Americans, including more than 76 million adults without dental insurance.

The merger was spurred by mutual respect between the prior competitors, said Dave Monahan, the CEO of Kleer and Membersy, as well as their shared mission. 

“There are two sides to this merger. There’s the people side, and then there’s the technical side. By the technical side, I mean working out the deal itself, but without the people side, the technical side falls apart,” Monahan said. “The biggest lesson I ever learned from the multiple mergers I’ve been through is just constantly staying in contact with the other side and being open to change.”  

Using cloud-based software, the firms provide dental practices, dental groups and dental service organizations (DSOs) with the tools to build a successful dental membership program, including consultative plan design, an advanced technology platform, plan branding and marketing collateral, regulatory compliance and live support for patients and dental office staff.

Discussions between Kleer and Membersy started almost two years before the actual merger took place, Monahan said.

One of the key drivers was strategic market expansion. Kleer’s strength in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) space complemented Membersy’s presence in the enterprise and DSO market. Together, the merged entity could serve a much broader range of customers.

Plus, the company is now eight to ten times larger than any of its competitors, according to Michael Shuman, the former Membersy CEO who’s now chief revenue officer for the combined business.

He loves telling the dual-brand story: both were pioneers in the dental membership space. 

“This move makes it crucial that we are consistently recognized as thought leaders in the industry,” Shuman said. “We need to effectively communicate our value to both our current customers and potential prospects, ensuring they understand the unique benefits our solution offers.” 

Coordinating a global product team

To leverage the strengths of both Kleer and Membersy, the companies had to effectively integrate their teams and processes, as well as their customer-facing platforms. 

Each had products designed for different customer bases, and leadership had to decide whether to continue developing them separately or to choose to move forward with just one.

The latter choice won out, said Chief Technology Officer Paul Biancaniello explaining that the decision to  integrate the two platforms was driven by the goal of creating a unified product that could leverage the strengths of both companies.

The product decision was made before the merger by a project team consisting of technology leads from both companies, so they could hit the ground running — but despite all of the forethought, the plan needed adjustments.

One issue: Kleer’s scrum team was composed of engineers in the Philadelphia area and in Ukraine, while Membersy is based in Austin with team members spread out across the United States. The size of the team that Biancaniello oversaw also increased. Ultimately, the product team’s integration involved scaling from one large scrum team to five smaller, specialized teams, and managing time zone challenges between the US and Ukraine by adapting to a different call schedule.

Throughout the challenges, Biancaniello kept coming back to one question as a guiding post: 

“How do we bring these two teams together, who are spread across the world, effectively get them working together, ultimately on a common technology stack that will be the direction into the future?” 

A collaborative merger, from communications to culture

Jesse Stafford, the VP of technology at Kleer and Membersy, heads the organization’s IT and security measures. For his team, the priority project was integration of communication platforms, such as Slack and Google. 

Having experienced about 20 M&As over the course of his career, Stafford said he’s learned that getting all employees on the same communication platform within the first 30 days is key for a merger’s success, especially in a remote world. 

Of all of the M&As Stafford has observed, Kleer and Membersy’s stood out as one of the most collaborative.

“A lot of times when you’re doing a merger or an acquisition, you’ll find people that are really dug in and say ‘This is my tool, and I’ve been using it forever,’” Stafford said. “With Kleer and Membersy, both companies were just willing to move to whatever made the most sense for us as a combined business.”

Kleer and Membersy sought not only to combine their tech, but also their company culture, said Chief People Officer Melissa Richardson.

Post-merger, the companies held an in-person values writing session to define their new combined values, involving all employees in the process, she said. This took place in September at a company retreat, where all Kleer and Membersy employees had the chance to meet in person. 

The value-writing session ended with 400 Post-it notes that were combined to create a company value list, including items such as authenticity, a shared desire to set industry standards and to embrace challenges. They even drafted a glossary of about 150 terms to ensure they’re all using the same language. (For example, Kleer referred to their product’s users as “subscribers” but Membersy called them “members.”) 

“We wanted to say, ‘Okay, this is our new combined company, so what is our new identity? What is our DNA?’” Richardson said. “We wanted to make sure that every employee had a say in that, so that they were fully bought in, and that they could live those values, day in and day out, and refer back to them, because otherwise they really don’t have any meaning.”

Richardson and her team have also conducted regular town halls and a People Operations survey to keep employees informed and engaged, while gathering feedback on what concerns needed to be addressed. Employees had a variety of questions on potential new management, changes to benefits or pay, changes in performance evaluation and more. 

Looking back, Richardson is proud of all that her team has accomplished — but she’s learned a valuable lesson in patience as a leader, particularly because people were often looking to her for answers that weren’t determined yet.

“It takes a lot from a leader to really prioritize and keep their focus on the two or three things that I need my team to be focused on right now,” she said. “This sounds very cliche, but control your controllables and resetting is the best way to move forward. The thing is, I want answers to their questions, too. They just need to know we’re going to figure it out but that’s all noise right now.”

Moving forward, Kleer and Membersy are looking forward to focusing on the long-term goals of the merger, including enhancing patient care and driving industry standards. 

“At the end of the day, the core of this process is patience and communication, and it’s not like a math problem with one solution. It’s not simple, it’s complex, because a lot of people are involved,” said Monahan, the CEO. “The story is, how do you get people to come together, right? That’s the challenge. It’s messy. It’s not a pretty process, but we are so excited to see what we accomplish together.”