SAP IT M&A is focused on delivering CLOUD solutions
Anyone that is involved with M&A Post Merger Integration (PMI) activities is well aware of the complexity of bringing together two companies, but if properly managed it can yield results that can propel your business well in front of your competitors.
THE SAP IT M&A PMI team has been managing PMI projects since 2006 and we have developed many tools and processes to improve the integration process of bringing together two companies. Our ultimate goal is to minimize the imapct to the business during this transition and focus on the best End User experience (EUX) that we can provide as we understand this is massive change for the acquired employees.
There are many key factors in a successful PMI project but in my opinion three of the most important are Collaboration, Compromise and Communication.
End User expereince, productivity & satisfaction of the user through the E2E process, is the underlying key success factor and guiding principal for our integration methodology. Sometimes this can't be achieved as the pure change from one technology solution to another means significant change for the end user. End users going through an integration are required to accept many changes to their daily work process.
The integration challendge is a unique balance, Compromise, of managing the merge of infrastructure technologies, offices & employees as well as changes to buisness models, applications and cultures & policies. The key to making all of this successful is clear, timely and informative Communications on both sides so that all are in sync with the changes needed to take place to facilitate the merge and achieve the goals of the acquisition (why you bought the company).
In this post today I am coming from the Technology/ Infrastructure side to highlight how we manage and support the Collaboration part of this story to bridge the two companies together during this process and solutions we provide for SAP PMI projects.
In the early stages of the integration we are still two seperate companies operating on seperate networks & systems. It is important for some employees to engage directly with employees from the other company to manage the integration, GTM product strategies, Financial consolidation & HR processes to name a few. IT needs to provide user-friendly solutions that support this need that are easy to use.
At SAP we provide the following "Day1" services to enable early collaboration.
- Network connection to facilitate interaction between companies
- Email forwarding from SAP email to the Acquired company mail service
- Acquired employees only need to check one mailbox
- Free/ Busy lookup is enable to help with planning meetings
- Access to a Virtual PC in SAP (WTS or VDI)
- Allows Acquired employees to us an SAP certified image to access SAP systems
- Instant Messaging - Lync "federation" with other IM systems where possible
- Mobile devices managed by SAP MDM that can access both environments
- Video Conferencing, group and 1-on-1 services
- Network file sharing solutions
- SAP JAM - information sharing without needing SAP credentials
Focusing on Collaboration, Compromise & Communication has helped SAP IT IS PMI team provide an integration methodology that is successful in supporting SAP's strategy to build up the 5 Market catagories and to be The Cloud company powered by SAP HANA.
