Retour 
This is the fourth, and final, part of a four-part blog series covering each of the four phases of the merger & acquisition (M&A) process and how you can build security into each phase. In case you missed them, Part 1 covered why it’s important to integrate security into the due diligence process in the first phase of M&A, Part 2 covered integration planning and public announcement, and Part 3 covered what you can expect on “Day One,” after a merger or acquisition closes.
Phase Four: Longer-term integration
As you move beyond Day One, you’re now able to provide the level of access that our executive teams need on both sides to run the combined business units. And on the operations side, you should have enablement for the different business units to start working together. But the two companies won’t really be integrated yet.
Longer-term integration is about enabling full business processes. One thing you’ll need to start with is comparing your existing technology stack to that of the target. What applications are they using? Are they an Office 365 or Google shop? Do they run Power BI instead of Excel? What cloud assets do they have? How many people are using them and what are they using them for?
You may need to evaluate solutions to decide which is the best technology for the business going forward. Deeper integration will mean getting everybody onto the same tech stack, one way or another. You don’t want to be running duplicate solutions or redundant licenses for key corporate resources for the long term. To manage this phase of integration, you need to first have an actual inventory of everything that’s currently in use. And assembling this kind of comprehensive breakdown of a new company’s tech stack can