5 Phases of Highly Efficient M&A IT Integration: Day 0 Employee Productivity

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One of the most complex challenges in IT is the integration process during an M&A event, where the acquired company has notable differences in its cloud, network, and workspace environments.

So much so, that upon joining Salesforce, the incoming CIO took M&A process improvement as a primary objective:

“From the day that I started, one of the number one objectives that was given to me as the new CIO was that the organization wanted to improve our overall M&A integration process, from both a business process standpoint, but also from a technology-integration standpoint^.”¹

Juan Perez, CIO of Salesforce

Every IT executive wants to ensure that during M&A integration, innovation is not disrupted, and the growth opportunities of a new customer base or market are attained quickly. However, this is not often the case, as studies show that between 70 and 90% of acquisitions fail to meet their intended objectives².

So what contributes to this failure? Organizations today have a heavy reliance on cloud infrastructure and distributed workforces, which introduce complexity in the integration process. Adding a new cloud provider either creates a multi-cloud environment or extends it, introducing new variability in your infrastructure, networks, security, developer experience, and end-user access.

IT leaders successfully navigating these multi-cloud challenges in M&A integration are unlocking the potential of their new combined organization faster, creating a distinct competitive advantage in the market.

VMware has acquired over 50 companies in the past 25 years, and we work with our customers regularly on their integration processes. Our portfolio of VMware Cross-Cloud services helps our customers deliver faster time to value in their M&A activity, providing layers of abstraction that standardize application development, infrastructure, and end-user experience across heterogeneous, multi-cloud environments.

These can be summarized in a set of 5 integration phases:

1. Employee Access: Enabling Day 0 access for new employees to corporate resources, for faster time to productivity.
2. Software-Defined Networking: Extending secure, high-performance network connections to physical sites and employees, for faster access to critical resources.
3. Multi-Cloud Infrastructure: Consolidating multi-cloud infrastructure to new target environments, for faster time to value in cloud investments, and developer productivity.
4. Multi-Cloud Security: Implementing consistent security across public cloud, datacenter, and endpoints, for the greatest reduction in risk during integration.
5. Multi-Cloud Application Development: Giving new developers access to cloud resources with enterprise guardrails, for faster time to value for application development.

Let’s walk through each phase we recommend as part of an efficient M&A IT integration process, starting with Employee Access in this post.

Multi-Cloud M&A Integration Phase 1: Enabling Day 0 access for new employees to corporate resources

Successful M&A integration begins with the employee experience. You want new employees to experience the shortest gap possible to productivity while improving security. This means getting access to the resources they need to do their jobs, without interruptions, delays, or calls to IT.

With VMware Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub, part of VMware Anywhere Workspace, you can enable employee productivity immediately, and use the same platform all the way through their day-to-day work in the future.

The first step, starting with the day the deal is announced, is using Intelligent Hub as a central communication hub where new employees can get news and information on the integration process, so everyone can connect and engage. New employees can access Intelligent Hub from a browser or native apps, even on devices that are managed by their former organization, enabling a gradual changeover.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is another option for accessing resources across different organizations, allowing employees to use the same laptop for both companies, saving the cost of purchasing new devices. For a 4,000-employee company, this amounts to over $7 million in savings on device hardware alone, which can be added to productivity saved by avoiding downtime during the transition.

Next, the same portal becomes an onboarding hub, with expanded access to further onboarding steps, a curated set of apps for new employees, and IT and HR resources. All of this is self-service, making these critical integration steps as seamless as possible for your IT staff.

Then last, Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub functions as a productivity hub for day-to-day work, with SSO access to every SaaS and internal app you provide to your workforce or specific groups. All of your access management, compliance, analytics capabilities, and more are on the admin side of the portal, providing a holistic view across your application and device landscape.

Catch up on the 5 Phases of Highly Efficient M&A IT Integration by reading the full series:

1. Day 0 Employee Productivity 
2. Multi-Cloud Network Unification 
3. Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Consolidation 
4. Multi-Cloud Security and Governance
5. Developer Access with Enterprise Guardrails

Want the full story in one place? Read our whitepaper “The Executive Guide to Efficient M&A IT Integration” here!

Our goal is to give you the strategic guidance you need to achieve faster time to value in your M&A integration efforts. Through these phases of integration, you can deliver a more seamless process for your organization, while developing a durable framework for future M&A events that follow the same playbook.

^{1 https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/09/salesforce-acquisitions-integrations/}

^{2 https://hbr.org/2020/03/dont-make-this-common-ma-mistake}