Merger Mechanics
- Article 5 of 77
- Information Age, February 2001
Corporate mergers often hinge on the successful integration of two incompatible IT infrastructures. How can IT managers ensure a successful outcome?
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Helen Donelly Toth, vice president of marketing at Managed Objects, a software vendor that specialises in integrating management information systems, says that “invariably, there will be Holy Wars over which tool is the best to use”.
It is a mistake, of course, to think that one merger is where it will stop. One of Managed Objects' customers, Bank of America, is in a constant flurry of merger activity with other banks, so it has to maintain an open framework to absorb acquired companies' IT infrastructures.
But by standardising on Internet Protocol-based software and browser-based interfaces, says Beveridge, companies are largely 'future-proofed'. “You might have an entirely different structure 10 years down the line, but a browser-based desktop will make it easier to pull everything together.”
Two years on from the AstraZeneca merger and with the bulk of the work done, the company is still going through changes - but not all of them are directly caused by the requirements of the merger. “You needn't look on a merger as a one-off event,” advises Burfitt. “You can look at it as opening up a whole new set of opportunities that become part of a continuing process of expansion.”
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