Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) is now very appropriately named after the $8.7 billion acquisition of Towers Watson. The acquisition — which feels more like a merger given the relative equal market capitalization of both companies — comes at a time of extreme change to traditional models of human resources and benefits consulting and insurance brokers.

Earlier this week, I tried to make sense of just what the hell happened with the ADP and Zenefits kerfuffle. On the surface, the primary issue is about security and employee data privacy. This is a big issue, but when you step back, there are a number of lessons for HR technology customers and vendors alike to learn from this feud.