Case study - Integrate five biotechs at once

The task

Produce and execute a business and technology integration plan for five companies at the same time: the platform company and the four companies joining it, with four different close dates. The work covered communications, Day 1 planning, integration planning, execution of the plan, and IT blueprinting.

What we did

• Produced a consolidated Day 1 plan and integration plan for all four acquisitions using our structured integration planning process, with monthly communications updates.
• Identified the deal drivers and integration objectives for each acquisition.
• Wrote functional charters for each function, mapping objectives to milestones.
• Built and ran detailed functional integration plans in Smartsheet with automated reporting, keeping the focus on execution while later milestones were still being planned.
• Summarised the programme in one integration roadmap across all four acquisitions.
• Produced a detailed IT infrastructure and applications blueprint for all five companies, with each resulting project added to the integration plan.

Cloud Fast Start

Our first Cloud Fast Start: a capability to start joint working fast by giving acquired employees access to proprietary applications through Amazon Web Services. Employees of the acquired companies had access to the platform company's desktop within two weeks of close, so cross-selling could start early.