Mail synchronization challenges aside, here’s the week’s challenge:

One of the common themes when combining companies is to streamline costs and maximize cohesion. Usually a number is thrown about as a percentage to cut or target budget for the combined entity going forward.

While some of this cannot really be determined until Day 1 has come and gone, there are a few places where you can get an early peak. However, you will need more than the single page summary line on the P&L statement.

Where would you expect to see some tech overlap, and how can you tell if it really is a common synergy?

For this exercise, you will be looking at the department software/tools spend and a larger breakdown on the IT side of things. Granted there is also the IT budget for common infrastructure to take into account as well.

The biggest thing we are after is the cloud spend whether it is various SaaS products (which you should be able to identify as a part of the department software/tool spend) or one of the main infrastructure cloud providers.

The SaaS side will be easier as either you will be keeping their tools or migrating them to yours (with the associated contract negotiations).

The infrastructure part becomes a little trickier, but if you can find their cloud spend then that will clue you in on how much they are leveraging their cloud vendor whether it is just as a platform or the underlying software offerings. This will clue you in to how much of your own usage can be leveraged or if you need to spend for new infrastructure.

This becomes even easier if they have a concept of recharge throughout the rest of the company for the services being managed and paid through the IT budget.

The danger is if everything is just thrown into the IT budget. Then your only real option is to wait until day 0.

cab