M&A Information Technology Best Practices

Appendix C

M&A IT Sample Case Studies

Manish LaadAbhishek MathurPrasanna Rajappa

Introduction

Whether you're taking a company apart or putting one together, M&A and restructuring tend to take place in the glare of the spotlight. These are high-visibility endeavors that come loaded with risk. If approaches are adopted that have already been tested, revenue and cost synergies can be expanded and accelerated, transaction risk can be significantly reduced, and transition of the workforce can be achieved in a smooth, structured manner even as the business, its operating model, and/or its capital model undergo fundamental changes.

In the current digital age, businesses have a critical dependency on IT systems; hence the success of any merger integration or divestiture transaction partially depends on the efficient and fast execution of the integration or separation of the business-critical IT systems. In addition to loss of cost synergies, integration or separation delays can lead to major business disruption, loss in value and revenue, reputational risk, and loss of key human capital. Additionally, not performing the IT systems transformation right can lead to a whole new set of problems, such as errors in business-critical operational data, regulatory compliance, and reporting. To make matters worse, IT executives and operations personnel are often brought into the due diligence process very late or not at all. This situation prevents them from providing valuable input on what the ...