M&A Architecture Roadmap & Roll-out Plan

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) can be a time of turmoil for a parent organization acquiring another organizational entity, as well as two or more organizations merging into a partnership or other form of legal entity. Typically, this requires the merging of staff, corporate assets, business processes and applications, technology infrastructure, among other consolidation requirements. M&As share many similar challenges as large organizations that are committed to optimize their operations and achieve both vertical and horizontal integration across their subsidiaries, geographic locations, business areas, etc. However, there are organizational challenges that need to be addressed to streamline and transition this effort efficiently and as transparently as possible. The componentization of the enterprise has been a long time mission and challenge of Enterprise Architecture in dealing with organizational mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring. Although organizational planning and IT architecture in this space is still evolving, Coherency Management and Enterprise Architecture have made great strides in providing effective architecture methods and tools, which have mature over the years. This has enabled organizations to plan and deploy merger, acquisition, and restructuring activities much better and faster in achieving their organizational target state. Industry Enterprise Architecture practices for mergers and acquisitions have the capability to analyze merger opportunities, as well as enhance the ability to execute on M&A Architecture Roadmaps (where an M&A Architecture Roadmap is a plan that identifies all the activities and deliverables required to rationalize and consolidate the IT assets of all organizations playing a part in the merger, acquisition, or restructuring effort). Furthermore, there is an agility element of a coherent enterprise which must be augmented to enable an agile M&A transition just as with any other organizational change management target at the enterprise level.

IT Architects provides a service to develop an M&A Architecture Roadmap and Roll-out Plan to rationalize and consolidate organizational IT assets in an organizational merger, acquisition, or restructuring situation. IT Architects practitioners specializing in M&A have recognized the need to aid organizations involved in mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring maintain operational continuity, while working with management to develop a tactical roadmap in achieving its target corporate identity. 

Typically, management does not consider the disarray about to be created by merger, acquisition, or restructuring until the “new organization” is legally approved. Thus, management, also undergoing change itself, realizes that it needs to be rescued and is put in a position to “invent” a strategy that will consolidate its operations, organizational resources, business processes and systems. IT Architects works with management to understand and develop a negotiated M&A strategy as part of its M&A architecture roadmapping initiative, since the strategic direction drives the tactical planning and deployment. This involvement during the strategic phase of planning allows the organization to understand what it needs to do to streamline business processes, consolidate systems, and then align the selected system functions to the new business processes. The outcome of strategic planning identifies the organizational and operational impacts, and the supporting resources required to transition the information technology landscape to the target state approved by management. This allows management to make well-informed decisions to achieve a target state optimizing both its operations and resources during transition and after the consolidation of target state is completed.

The myriad of duplicated processes and systems can be overwhelming requiring skills to make sense of it all. IT Architects has been successful in helping organizations understand the current “state-of-affairs” and developing an M&A Architecture Roadmap to minimize duplication while enhancing operational efficiency. Thus, we have developed a “fast-track” enterprise architecture approach, referred to as IT ArchitectsTM Mergers & Acquisitions, to capture a consolidated data, process, application, and technical architecture for organizations undergoing mergers, acquisitions, or another form of organizational restructuring. Specifically, the resulting M&A architecture guides the new organization in the consolidation of business processes, resources performing work, disparate systems and applications supporting those processes, data repositories, interfaces, and the underlying technology infrastructure. 

In summary, mergers, acquisitions, and organizational restructuring are unique events in the public and private organizational landscape requiring a “specialized” architectural approach to streamline both business processes and systems across organizational, functional, and geographic boundaries. IT Architects has focused on developing an effective approach in helping organizations readily understand how the merger, acquisition, or restructuring scenario will impact the current business process and application landscape, and what it needs to do to consolidate and align its business processes and system functions on a unified technology platform, or a diverse group of integrated platforms where required (especially where hybrid cloud and disparate on-prem platforms must co-exist).