Any CIO who has been through the complex mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process before will understand the consequences that come from not having a clear strategy for integrating IT systems. Having an unclear strategy can have huge implications on the actual bottom line of the business, yet so many companies still consider IT as an afterthought of the M&A process. Recently, we have witnessed a surge in M&A speculation, with the likes of the LSE/TMX exchange takeover deal. Furthermore, the tech M&A fever spewed more heat as shares of Facebook rose sharply around stories of a potential buyout deal with Twitter.

The result of this speculation has led to much debate and discussion about how fast or slow the IT integration process should be. My personal opinion is that the faster you get the integration done, and the more involved the CIO is with the process, the better it will be for both parties. It is also important that the CIO looks to explore new ways to position themselves as a key cog in the complex M&A wheel.

When the CIO and his operations and technology people are around the table with the finance or marketing teams, everyone has good reasons for why "their" version of the business process is the quickest, the cheapest and the most scalable. Given the importance of data, information and analytics to any organisation these days, CEOs are expecting their CIOs to play major roles in the redesign and enablement of new business models. This presents an outstanding opportunity for CIOs to enhance strategic value within the M&A team. Here is a perfect opportunity for CIOs to step up into a leadership position and work with their partners in the business to truly integrate the best parts of each of the legacy processes into a new best-of-breed process.

However, in order to achieve this leadership position and successful integration, the CIO must work and build a relationship with the M&A team right upfront. IT has to be part of business growth strategy and not an afterthought. If the IT integration team is not part of the M&A process right from the due diligence phase onwards, then there is something seriously wrong with the strategy. Integrating systems and processes is very complex and if not carried out correctly, can have a huge impact on the entire day-to-day performance of any business.

For example, the acquired organisation may decide to use a project management process to send out invoices to their customers. In contrast, the acquirer may adopt a manual process handled by their finance department. This can be a major point of concern because the IT team members who work closely with the overall M&A team will require deep and thorough understanding of the invoicing process in order to align their applications correctly. Therefore, from the CIO perspective, the best way to handle this process is to develop an IT risk assessment document and ensure the mitigation strategies are embedded into the overall M&A framework.

There is also the fundamental issue of whether to categorise applications and integrate them in a phased manner. All organisations have numerous applications, which have been developed over many years. Some, like email, are lifeblood applications, and others have been developed to address a bespoke business problem. In theory, an M&A should provide the CIO with a great opportunity to clean up their application portfolio and develop a plan to retire rarely used applications. In general, the strategy should be to integrate the business critical applications, into the lifeblood category. This includes enterprise resource planning (ERP), Invoicing, HR and financial applications. This will make it much easier to integrate the applications supporting ancillary business processes like executive travel booking.

However, it is worth noting that for the CIO, integrating IT does not start or end with integrating applications. It starts with integrating the infrastructure like networks, telephone systems and goes well beyond applications with IM and chat support, rolling out of help desk and finally the email setup. However, there are two common sticky points that organisations often faced with integrations. Firstly, size limit on emails. This can be a very difficult issue to handle especially in cases where larger organisations are taking over smaller organisations. Large and medium companies tend to have strict quota on email. This is classic example of why the CIO needs to be involved from the outset.

In addition to handling applications and management processes, developing clear templates and deliverables at each phase should also be taken into consideration. Depending on the stages an organisation follows for integration, such as due diligence, the CIO also has to evolve the IT strategy with the business phases. IT can only be effectively aligned if each phase of the strategy has a clear set of pre-defined documents which can be used by any team member without too much of knowledge transfer, and clear deliverables which articulate any key concerns or measures. For example, the IT team should highlight the major risks in the process of integration, and then suggest an ideal timeframe for completion based on all the factors in the due diligence phase. In follow up, a clear step-by-step project plan for integration should be developed as part of the signing and closing phase. Finally, documents should be in place to report weekly during the post signing process, and stakeholders should also be able to address the major challenges right away.

The final and perhaps most critical area that CIOs should be fully involved in is the organisation structure, specifically when merging the acquired IT team into the existing IT department or function. Unless the acquired company will be a stand-alone entity, most organisations will have only one leader, so it’s important to rationalise and identify synergies among staff. CIOs should look to estimate how many people they will require incrementally within their team by assessing both skills and workloads. Whatever the situation, CIOs must keep in mind, there will be a period of time where retaining the acquired team will be critical.

In summary, CIOs clearly have the opportunity to transform their role from manager of the IT cost center to a recognised business leader who not only delivers operational efficiencies but who also drives innovative change and enable sustainable business value and growth. In order to achieve this, they must strike the right balance between engaging and building the relations wit the M&A team, demonstrating the broad range of ways in which they can make major contributions to business strategy and execution.