IT Best Practices for Financial Managers

Chapter 20. Ways to Use Mergers, Acquisitions, or Divestitures toBuild Sustainable Information Technology Value

Peter J. Blatman

Joseph Joy

The "secret sauce" required to realize the expected business value from mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures can be described succinctly as doing the right things, and doing them right. With respect to information technology (IT), "doing the right things" is ensuring that all planned post-transaction IT initiatives are aligned with the business/synergy objectives of the transaction itself. "Doing them right" is executing these planned IT initiatives flawlessly by adhering to rigorous project management methodologies and staffing all projects in a cost-effective manner. When you stop to think about it, these are the things that financial and technology executives should be focused on all the time.

With this thought in mind:

• In what ways can financial executives, in collaboration with the chief information officers (CIOs), extend mergers and acquisitions (M&A) IT best practices beyond the microcosm of an individual merger, acquisition, or divestiture transaction and bring similar high levels of intensity, visibility, and focus to their full IT agendas, including measurement of return on investment and business value delivered?

• In what ways can IT organizations realize potential M&A-like benefits (e.g., synergy capture, cost reduction, and efficiency/effectiveness improvement) for all IT projects by adopting the well-established project management ...