Best Practices: EA Should Take An Active Role In Mergers And Acquisitions

A new wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) is happening, and contrary to previous M&A periods in which IT was only tactically involved, organizations now draw IT into their plans for cost savings and productivity improvements. Previously, organizations rarely involved enterprise architects prior to the close of an M&A and after the close date largely brought them in for application or infrastructure rationalization. This is changing in many firms. Forrester spoke with EAs at numerous firms and identified four best practices to improve EA involvement in M&As: 1) prepare for M&A activity in advance; 2) understand the company's objectives for each of the most probable M&A types; 3) during the M&A, integrate cultural constraints and regulatory requirements into the plans; and 4) use the post-M&A period to mature the EA practice. We also identified a next practice: Use business and IT capability maps developed before an M&A to accelerate due diligence and planning.