The process involved in Mergers and Acquisitions can be very taxing on an organization's resources. During the process organizations are faced with employee uncertainty fed by rumors and general fear, as well as the difficult task of assessing the combined organization's resource strengths and weaknesses. Many organizations are now turning to outside help to do many of the tasks related to coordination and facilitation of the process, such as:

Due Diligence Assessment

Assessing the strengths and weakness of the planned acquisition or merger will help to ensure the investment strategy is in line with the perceived value. From a technology perspective, you need to understand alignment with your standard platforms, configurations and in many cases regulatory compliance. Understanding these will help you to document and plan for post integration investments that you will need to make.

Integration Planning

Developing a phased plan to integrate the old entities into the new combined organization, is an absolute necessity. This will involve technology evaluations to determine the best technologies to utilize going forward and transition users and data off the ones you are about to phase-out. People and processes are also critical areas that need to be factored into the planning process.

Pre-integration Activity

Depending on the size of your company, there may be a waiting period between when the shareholders and the government approve the merger or acquisition to move forward. During that time you don't want to lose time, but you also don't want to cross the line of non-competitiveness, which regulators frown upon. For IT Departments, this means setting up "sand boxes" and beginning testing to learn about potential technology integration challenges.

Integration

Performing the integration activity will tax your resource like never before. During this time, you will not only have your traditional "keeping the lights-on" responsibilities on top of the business growth initiatives, but also this new mountain of projects to become one company within one to three years. Skillfully managing this requires focus and leadership qualities.

CIMA has experienced professionals who have helped organizations successfully complete multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions over the past decade. Let us help you ake a smooth transition.