Once the deal is made, the first discussion is what to do about the company. Primarily: how to integrate the purchase to fulfill the acquirers’ goals.

If there are custom components coming as a part of the acquisition, there are few things to keep in mind:

  • Familiarity with the tech stack going from the application layer all the way down to the network infrastructure on both sides
  • The maturity of the acquirers’ infrastructure to handle the absorbing of the custom applications
  • The skills on hand to not only bring the application onboard, but also maintain it

Any gaps in these three things will make or break any integration effort and ultimately dictate the success or failure of the integration effort and ultimately the acquisition goals.

But I’m sure you already know that. The biggest question is what to do about it? First, lets define what the unknowns are.

Think of the above things as a puzzle: once you know what the tech stack of the custom apps look like, then you have the outline for the pieces you are working with.

The newly defined pieces will allow your team to figure out how to plug things into your ecosystem. Where the shapes don’t align is your gap (unfamiliar tech from the acquired side, missing functionality on the acquiring side). These are the gaps that must be resolved before you even think about tweaking their apps.

Note: This area especially may pose the greatest scheduling risk as you are taking the unknown unknowns and turning them into known unknowns.

Lastly, who do you have from either company that can work on the effort and can address the gaps on either end (or preferably both) ends of the board? If you don’t have them focused 100% on this effort, you will be resource bound. Especially when it comes to people familiar with only one side or the other. There will be a lot of coordination work required.

Where do you see your gaps?

Cheers, cab