Technology Due Diligence
Before starting strategic planning, it is essential to conduct full due diligence that covers the key technology areas of integration. The scope should protect critical technology assets, applications, infrastructure, and data. This will help to identify any areas that can cause the M&A to be unsuccessful, such as regulatory restrictions or data residency requirements.
It can also help to highlight cybersecurity risks that can arise, such as a vulnerable technology or one environment having high technical debt. Quest can help you capture and identify these issues early on, which not only helps management make informed decisions about whether to proceed with the acquisition but also helps you avoid other problems later.
Gap Assessments
An M&A is not an organic growth of an existing company’s IT footprint, but a merger of different systems, environments, applications, and security controls. It is imperative to carry out a thorough assessment at the start to identify potential areas of overlap, security issues, compatibility problems, technical debt, and areas of improvement.
Quest can guide you through this assessment in the planning phase, letting you reap the benefits further down the line with a much smoother technology integration.
Project Plan
An M&A must be treated like a project, complete with a fully defined plan (especially for technology systems). This plan should highlight critical milestones and checkpoints with regular updates provided to management on successes or blockers.
Management should ensure that sufficient investments in time and budgets are allocated so that the technology migration happens seamlessly. This can include training or upskilling existing staff, creating new environments for data storage, revamping security controls, upgrading existing hardware, etc. Quest has expertise with all types of projects and can help you devise a smart project plan for your acquisitions tech management.
IT Governance
It is essential to have full transparency through the M&A project by involving critical stakeholders like technology, audit, governance, risk management, cybersecurity, etc. This will ensure that the risk posture of either environment is not compromised, and technology controls are not downgraded.
It is common during M&A for large amounts of data to be generated and stored as the environments merge. Having appropriate governance processes will ensure that no data security or quality issues arise in the long run, and Quest has the skills to assist you with designing these processes.
Integration and Implementation
In the implementation phase, systems, applications, and infrastructure begin the complex task of integration with each other. This requires oversight of all areas to ensure that no business or system disruption occurs and data is seamlessly migrated between environments. A key technology management area to consider is personnel training on the new applications and systems that will be used.
Without proper training, staff will not be able to use the migrated applications, and they may also become resistant to the new technology systems and processes. This can result in delays, errors, and reduced morale.
Therefore, investing in training early on can pay huge dividends further down the road. This is another place where Quest can help; our experience with setting up employee training will be useful for your M&A.
Monitoring and Oversight
M&A is not a one-time activity. Systems, applications, and data must be routinely monitored to ensure no issues arise. Additionally, it is important to consider that errors and misconfigurations might not be immediately apparent and may take months or even years to appear.
Criteria must be defined for the signoff of migrated data and applications as part of the technology management strategy. You can leverage Quest’s expertise to make sure the proper monitoring is occurring in your business.
We recognized early on that we did not have the skill sets or tools to tackle a red-alert emergency. That’s why we formed our partnership with Quest. 
