Sharpening the saw between acquisitions
- This topic has 2 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 2 months, 1 week ago by
.
-
Posts
-
All, aside from participating in IMAA courses, what do you do in your professional careers to stay relevant in the merger space between acquisitions? In my company, there are often several months to several years between purchases, so our ability to stay sharp when a deal is imminent can be difficult to achieve.
In the IT space, the time between acquisitions is actually when a lot of the groundwork for future integrations gets done. I use that time to stay connected to what IT is implementing. That could be infrastructure upgrades, new systems, cloud migrations, or application rollouts. These changes are often tied directly to business goals like improving customer experience, reducing operational costs, or enabling growth.
Between deals, I focus on understanding how these initiatives are expected to support the business. That context is critical when it comes time to plan post-merger integration. Knowing what systems are being modernized, what architectures are being standardized, and what the current support models look like helps me build realistic integration plans when the next acquisition happens.
I also treat internal IT projects as a way to refine the M&A playbook. I’m documenting lessons learned, improving templates, and testing out approaches we might apply in an integration. So even when deal activity slows, I’m learning and updating my approach based on what IT is doing day-to-day.
This is a great post Jess, between acquisitions, my team usually enhances our Integration process. After a deal, we conduct a retro of what went well, what didn’t go so well, etc. And in the down time, we update our procedures for the next deal.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
