M&As are being fueled by policy changes, new tax legislation, the ongoing epidemic, and a sluggish economic recovery. M&As not only provide access to a larger client base, open doors to new goods or assets, and pave the road for higher market share, but they also allow for rapid and low-cost product diversification.
Your All-In-One IT Checklist for Mergers and Acquisitions
However, effective mergers need careful preparation and accuracy in integrating the many IT aspects that both firms rely on to conduct business.
Having a well-thought-out IT checklist (or even a standardized set of procedures) in place guarantees precise activity prioritization while also ensuring that all jobs are completed accurately, on time, and on budget. For a successful merger and acquisition, here’s your comprehensive IT checklist:
1. Business Evaluation
To guarantee that both firms are on the same page, follow these steps:
- Examine common corporate policies, including information security, code of conduct, terms of service, and data categorization.
- identify any security flaws, analyze data security capabilities, and determine the amount of cyber risk.
- Examine the findings of past audits and evaluations and make improvements as needed.
- Conduct thorough due diligence and appraisal in order to create an all-encompassing and complete integration strategy.
2. IT Evaluation
To conduct a comprehensive and in-depth examination of technological systems:
- Make a list of all the present IT systems, tools, and apps.
- Look for systems and solutions that are duplicated or overlapped.
- Determine which systems need to be updated, integrated, or retired.
- Recognize important workloads
3. Licenses and Contracts
Transparency, transferability, and termination provisions must all be established:
- Gather all vendor and other service provider contracts, agreements, and commitments.
- To preserve healthy relationships and assure compliance, fully comprehend the ownership and rights of software/hardware licenses.
- All internal contracts and promises to internal personnel should be reviewed and included in the transition strategy.
- To calculate the risks of transfer and termination, do a complete third-party risk assessment.
4. Integration of data
To guarantee that data integration and transfer are seamless and correct, follow these steps:
- Conduct end-to-end data profiling to establish the quality and quantity of data available. Assess data quality against predetermined parameters to decide what data needs to be merged or transferred.
- Revise business expectations in light of integration obstacles and project costs, and select data to be integrated accordingly.
- Understand the importance and significance of various types of data, both logically and physically, in order to confirm business requirements and allow smooth integration and migration.
5. Integration of the systems
To guarantee that IT systems are properly and successfully linked, follow these steps:
- Make a thorough map of your current IT systems and architecture and share it with other executives.
- Make a detailed list of all system integration activities in an integration plan.
- Examine how present IT infrastructure is managed and how it may be integrated or outsourced.
- Analyze the scalability of current systems and devise an acquisition plan that corresponds to their capabilities.
6. Network Integration To comprehend how networks will be joined or merged, consider the following:
- Determine if the new entity created by the merger and acquisition will continue on separate networks, combine into one, or become part of a whole new network.
- Understand the advantages, disadvantages, and dangers of each technique before selecting the one that will result in the most successful and least disruptive transition plan.