Prioritising the IT integration projects

The high priority and big ticket IT integration projects should be clearly identifiable from your IT due diligence report and based on the integration approach your business adopts. Projects like common branding, linked email/voicemail/networks and consolidated financial reporting.

However, the increased reliance of all parts of the business on technology means that there will be a large number of department-specific requests that aren't on this "top list", but which will nonetheless have a significant impact on the business's ability to operate. Some of these may come from the acquired company, particularly if its owners improved short term profitability by reducing IT investment in the run up to the deal.

First, get closely involved in every department's integration planning process. You may need to allocate responsibilities across your team in order to cover them all. Aggregate the emerging requirements. Understand the pain that each department will go through with and without IT support. And try to differentiate between “need” and “want” – people will use the integration as an opportunity to slip in requests for projects that would not otherwise get air time.

Determine, in broad terms, the capacity available from the two IT teams now available to you. Then calculate the maximum capacity if external suppliers were used as well. The latter is bounded by your people’s ability to oversee and then integrate what is being delivered. Next, trim this maximum capacity back to what the business says it can afford (as a general rule, large teams of consultants are expensive and so should only be considered for equally large, discrete, non-repeating projects such as an ERP system replacement). Look at backfilling operational roles with contractors to release IT staff for key integration positions. And consider performance-related retention bonuses to motivate those staff whose roles will not exist beyond the integration.

You are now ready for the business integration team’s prioritisation process. You will have developed a view about which projects must be done, which should be done if funds allowed, and which could wait. And you may be more aware than most of the cross-department synergies and dependencies relating to each project. You will have two hats: as a department head (your IT integration projects [such as core infrastructure] will be prioritised along with everyone else's) and as the supplier of integration capacity. Make sure you are seen not to abuse this unique position of trust - it will reinforce your standing with senior management.

Start to manage people’s expectations as early as possible. Your experience will indicate to you how many of the “should be done” projects are likely to make the cut. Let the business integration team know this. Funds may be moved from another initiative to the IT integration if the benefits are deemed to be greater from delivering the appropriate IT project.

Importantly, the resulting list of prioritised IT integration projects will be a sub-set of the business’s overall prioritised list. A business decision, not an IT decision. You will end up reminding people, politely, of this point throughout the integration.