Software / Business Services
Clearing an acquisition backlog for a serial acquirer, then making the next deals easy
Two programmes, 30 and 50 acquisitions respectively — one of them running at a deal every few weeks. We arrived to a stack of historic acquisitions integrated in name only, and a permanent Them and Us.
- Client
- PE-backed serial acquirer (software & services)
- Service
- Post-deal Integration + Tech DD
- Stage
- Programme (pre & post-deal)
01
The challenge
- —A backlog of historic acquisitions, bloated and unfinished integrations
- —Them and Us between the acquirer and every business it had bought
- —No repeatable integration capability in-house; each deal restarted from zero
- —Duplicated legacy technology carrying millions in avoidable opex
- —Acquired employees learning their fate days before we arrived on site
02
Our approach
01
Integrate the backlog first
Rather than starting with the new deal, we finished the old ones. In both programmes we integrated eight historic acquisitions first — which is how we learned the in-house team, the technology, the processes and the politics.
02
People sensitive to the situation
We put in operators who have done M&A before, so the bedside manner is right on day one. Reassurance first, roadmap second. Stakeholders met across the business, not just in IT.
03
Merger OS as the spine
Lens, our Merger OS, carries what was found pre-deal straight into post-deal delivery, so nothing is rediscovered and communication and programme management run in one place.
04
Turn the first one into a model
The first integration took six months, because it was carrying the backlog with it. We turned what we learned into t-shirt sizing — roughly 30 days for a small back-office bolt-on, 60 or 120 days for larger businesses — with cost models and project timings attached to each size.
05
Rationalise, then hand back
Old technology retired, duplicated platforms consolidated, and around twenty project managers embedded — then the IMO handed back to an internal team that could run it without us.
03
Outcomes
- ✓Six months for the first integration, then 30, 60 or 120 days by size for everything that followed
- ✓Cost models and project timings that could be applied at the diligence stage, before signing
- ✓Eight historic acquisitions integrated before touching the new pipeline, in both programmes
- ✓£2m of annual run-rate opex removed by retiring duplicated legacy estate and moving to the cloud
- ✓~20 project managers embedded, then transitioned to internal ownership
- ✓A repeatable integration model: pre-deal findings feed post-deal delivery every time
- ✓Them and Us dismantled — one operating company rather than a holding pattern
Takeaway
"If the last four acquisitions are still half-integrated, the fifth will not go well. Finish the backlog and the next deal becomes routine — that's what we mean by every deal being easier than the last."
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