The quality and quantity of advance preparation you undertake will directly equate to the level of success your M&A integration achieves.
Integration plans should be tailored to suit the specific characteristics of each M&A project, and your existing IT environments and capabilities need to be analysed early on in the process to identify the potential opportunities or threats to a change in your business structure.
Here are a few tips to help you when it comes to implementing the best project management strategies.
Don’t overburden your in-house project management teams
IT project management teams can often become overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of an M&A integration.
It’s unwise to treat an M&A integration as though it were a standard IT project. There is so much more to consider than purely the merging of technologies – you need to take into account the people involved and the changes they are facing.
This is why it’s short-sighted to put the whole burden of a project on your IT team – it needs to be far more wide reaching than that with your technology strategy aligned with your people and processes.
Bring in specialist M&A project managers
By calling in the experts, you relieve the pressure from your in-house teams and instead rely on the expertise of project managers who have experience of numerous M&A integrations.
They will ensure that implementation and support teams fully understand their individual responsibilities. By bringing specialist M&A experience to your organisation, plans are followed with the right level of detail, and nothing is left to chance.
Project managers will undertake to make sure all regulatory and compliance needs are fully discovered and managed and that your agreed services will continue to operate to their benchmarked performance.
Adopt a comprehensive and strategic approach
As well as responsibility for the coordination of your M&A programme, project managers can help to design an integration plan that delivers the full potential of your acquisition. As expert consultants, they are able to identify and manage risk, develop mitigation plans, support executives with decision-making and help to resolve any conflict within your teams.
Plus, they have the expertise of M&A projects to ensure you keep to your budget and timescale. As we’ve said, you can’t treat an acquisition like any other IT project; it needs experienced project managers to focus on what is unique to a merger environment.
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Plan post-implementation support
And our project management doesn’t stop on the day of integration. Experienced project managers will have planned for Day Two and beyond.
As well as the execution of the planned integration, they will ensure that support is in place to assist teams when the merger becomes a reality. By monitoring core system performance and offering technical support to your teams, our management of your project will ensure its success and help your organisation to achieve the best results from both the acquired and acquiring company.
If you’d like to know how to plan for post-implementation success, contact us for a friendly discussion regarding your IT needs on 0800 622 6719.
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