Post-acquisition technology integration: assurance and recovery
PROPERTY, INFRASTRUCTURE & CONSTRUCTION · TECHNOLOGY · ASSURANCE
The situation
After a large acquisition, a global property and infrastructure group merged three independent operating companies into a single building, engineering, and services structure. To capture back-office synergies it launched an $18.4 million technology-integration program to consolidate the infrastructure, networks, applications, and data centres of the legacy businesses. Due-diligence constraints had hidden the real state of those environments: undocumented servers, unmapped desktop privileges, and significant technical debt. Core systems fell ten to eighteen months behind, and with service quality slipping and contingency running down, the board wanted an independent review to recover the program.
The work
Retained as independent assurance partner, we audited the integration across fifty-seven concurrent initiatives:
Mapped the inherited technical debt, and diagnosed why directory services, messaging migration, and data-centre consolidation had been under-scoped.
Audited fifteen accelerated tactical projects and showed that, while they met the legal go-live date, they were starving the larger strategic platforms of the people needed to deliver them.
Found significant resource contention and project-manager turnover, and recommended moving critical work out of business-as-usual structures into dedicated teams, with delivery risk transferred to qualified vendors.
Replaced a multi-layered governance model that kept corporate decisions away from the operational coalface with a flatter model led by accountable operators.
Re-prioritised the remaining portfolio on a risk-versus-benefit basis, so the board could accelerate business-critical access and mobile platforms, defer low-priority applications, and stop low-yield work.
The outcome
A rebuilt governance structure with clear accountability between corporate and operating units.
A re-prioritisation plan that protected the remaining budget for business-critical work.
Operational blueprints for the final phases that reduced re-work, eased resource conflict, and stabilised service levels.