Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
One of my clients was recently acquired by an international buyer. I’m going to avoid providing too many details to protect the parties involved, but I think that the story still has value. Although the consulting engagement that I was providing will not be required after the acquisition, I was asked to remain in order to assist with the integration activities. In this article I am going to provide a case study of how that integration has gone from the perspective of the acquired company. For those of you who find yourselves managing integration projects--whether from the buyer’s perspective or the acquired company--hopefully some valuable lessons can be taken from my experience.
Inevitably there have been some great experiences--and also some things that I would have liked to have seen done differently. Additionally, the project is not yet complete, so maybe next time gantthead has an appropriate topic I can provide an update on the initiative
Project background The project consisted of an IT/systems transition: hardware, telecom, network, corporate applications, specialist/in-house applications…everything. With a very small number of exceptions, virtually everything was migrating to the systems of the new parent company.At the same time, there was a business integration taking place for virtually all business areas--sales, marketing, operations,