Every so often, I’m reminded of the Superbowl commercials and one out of the .com boom on herding cats (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MaJDK3VNE). There’s something to be said for grabbing attention and attempting to draw random relation to tech. Granted this is still true to this day, but I digress.

The tech in the case of an acquisition comes in two flavors:

  • The stuff that powers the company on a day to day basis that everyone uses. Think of it as your financials, CRMs, email, expenses, shared drive, etc. There will be a lot of duplication here.
  • The stuff that contains the special sauce. These are the custom apps that power the company and everything that goes with it. If you’re a tech company, then this would be the code repositories, servers, monitoring, and bug tracking. If you’re in legal, then it would be your case management tools, timekeeping system, secure document store. There might be some duplication, but also some new stuff you need to get a handle on.

When you acquire a company, part of the process is integrating the financials, deals in progress, and the people. Most of this is done through the first flavor.

The second flavor is the golden goose of the company and what you want to preserve and merge into your own ecosystem. This is the part that poses the most complexity and will require the most care to bring over.

Why not treat it as such?

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