How to Reduce Risk When Integrating an Acquired Organization

Merging an acquired organization’s data and processes can be straightforward if you have strong change management practices and a solid understanding of both organizations' systems. Here's how to reduce risk of encountering challenges along the way.

Choose a point person
From both your organization and the acquisition target, pick people that have intimate understandings of the business processes and systems. Ideally, these people are involved as early as due diligence and will continue through the consolidation. They also will serve as the liaison and advocate for the people in their organization.

Decide on an integration strategy
Your organization may choose to keep the acquisition target executing by itself, change how they execute processes and which systems they use to "your way", or some combination of those strategies. Each of these are valid and depends greatly on how your organization stands to benefit from the target. Regardless, decide early what the approach will be and ensure that everyone is aware of what it is.

Keep an open mind
An acquisition target has value to the acquiring organization, which may include the processes and systems that it uses. Look for areas where the target is running more efficiently and consider whether to adopt those practices, even if it is deferred to a project beyond the integration.

Find and fill in the gaps
There will be gaps in people's expectations, where processes start and end, and what data and systems exist. Find these gaps and decide on a strategy for how to fill them. This is an iterative process that becomes more granular as you get deeper into the integration.

Update and regularly revisit documentation
Assumptions and decisions will be made, some of which will require unwinding. Note the logic for why and how the team arrived at those, and encourage transparency with a central repository of these once the integration is underway. This is especially helpful if you're concerned about team members leaving midway or as part of restructuring at the end of the itnegration.

TLDR: Acquiring and integrating an organization relies on proactive planning, openness to new practices, and clear communication throughout the process.