When it comes to getting a handle on the tech that will be conveyed, your options:

  1. Wait until the deal closes.
  2. Try to interview key personnel once the deal is announced.

For the first option, you should have the access you need, provided you won’t need to go back to legal to have a few points clarified and terms renegotiated based on your findings. Additionally, you have to learn, scope, and find someone to assist with conveying the tech. Lastly, you are now eating into the critical time from close to day 1 of having everything fully integrated as per the terms of the deal that closed.

The second option will provide more of a heads up on what to expect and plan for once the deal closes. The two additional challenges for you:

  1. Knowing what to ask.
  2. Asking in such a way that you don’t cross legal/ethical lines on colluding.

This is where bringing in a third-party can help:

  1. They have the experience to know what questions to ask to provide the context you’ll need to work with so you can get your budgets and timetables lined up.
  2. They are independent of both parts negating the legal risk.
  3. Once the deal closes, they can help your team fill in the gaps in knowledge/expertise.

Given how critical IT is to the business, this is something akin to asking a potential acquisition target to provide their crown jewels before you buy them. Yet you’d still want to have them appraised, right?