Integrating IT systems following a Merger or Acquisition

There are a ton of challenges associated with Mergers and/or Acquisitions (MorAs), however, this article focuses on one area of significance — integrating IT tools and data.

Following a MorA, the parties have a decision to make:

1. Leave the two companies as separate entities and exchange data between IT systems.
2. Harmonise their IT tools into a common set.

Regardless of which option is chosen, data needs moving or manipulating if the MorA is to strike a Return on Investment (ROI).

The easiest of all scenarios is when IT tools used by two companies are the same, but even then, merging data to create a single source of truth can be an absolute nightmare. The tools will have different workflows, data fields, history, etc. so ensuring no context is lost behind these while retaining access for all parties is of course a moving target as the amount of data continues to grow and database schemas change.

When IT tools used by two companies are from different vendors, the complexity of the IT solution more than doubles. Regardless, a massive component in any transformation project is system interconnectivity.

For the workers at the coalface, disconnected software and systems mean a whole lot of copy and pasting, double or triple entry, chasing up of latest versions and endless quests for the canonical (the single point of truth).

For managers right up to C-level personnel, the lack of connectivity spells inefficiency; wasted resources (especially staff hours), lack of mobility, higher costs, and a definite dulling of competitive edge. Such challenges can be demotivating and risk the very reason and benefit of the MorA, i.e. market or principal value.

Creating connections between different systems, applications, services, and silos used to require teams of skilled programmers. These costly hand-crafted creations were often fragile beasts, prone to break after an upgrade to a system, and were cumbersome to reconfigure on-the-fly according to, for example, new and ever-changing business requirements.

Thankfully, there are solutions out there that create just the sort of agile, malleable and easily-configurable connections that the modern enterprise needs in order to maintain or regain its competitive edge. Often it's a combination of the following:

1. A new breed of iPaaS solutions (Integration Platform as a Service). These products are typically cloud-based and offer ways to ensure data connections can be set up without recourse to expensive teams of specialists, allowing data to be managed and monitored right across the myriad of systems that the organisation uses. Examples include Zapier or Integromat.

2. A zero-programming (or low-code) approach where integrations can be crafted in code through a drag and drop approach to software programming. Often, so-called citizen developers (non-professional programmers) learn to create complex software applications without needing to handcraft a single line of code. This makes any ongoing maintenance easy and is ideal for going beyond the capability of iPaaS tools to achieve proper data management. Our recommendation here is Mendix.

In a recent article from Gartner, these solutions were rated 1st and 2nd for market hypergrowth - https://bit.ly/3shk9Db.

Mergers or Acquisitions require flexibility and agility in a timely manner, which means being able to change configurations at will, add new applications into the mix, and retire older services – all at the business’s strategic behest, not at the limited bandwidth of the IT department.

By deploying one of the solutions featured above, your organisation can work more quickly and efficiently, integrate with ease, and finally, make digital transformation a process that allows the whole enterprise to work to shared goals rather than fragment into data silos and discrete functions.

For more information on anything we’ve covered in this article, or to get started with low-code, contact us at https://www.clear-code.io