Post-Merger IT Integration Strategies: An IT Alignment Perspective

[Word Count]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I, (Your name), would like to declare that all contents included in this thesis/dissertation stand for my individual work without any aid, & this thesis/dissertation has not been submitted for any examination at academic as well as professional level previously. It is also representing my very own views & not essentially which are associated with university.

Signature: _______________________________

Date: __________________________

DECLARATION

I , hereby declare to the best of my knowledge that all the contents of this thesis represent my personal authentic work, and that no such thesis has been previously submitted for any academic examination or any other qualification. Additionally, it is a representation of my own personal opinions, and does not have anything to do with those of the University.

Signed: __________________. Date: _________________.

Abstract

M&A activity is now considered as day-to-day objective for most organizations rather than once-in-a-lifetime corporate affair. Small and large companies are merging to create a healthier company culture of financial base. All of these companies use information systems in their work flow processes. Thus IT integration can be considered as one of the crucial factors for successful mergers. However, IT integration is often given less priority in merger planning, as managements tend to focus on the strategic and organizational compatibility of the two companies and leaving the IT issues to a later stage. IS professionals are often not involved in structural changes until after an official announcement is made. With little warning, IS staffs are asked to merge the two system incompatibilities quickly so that the disruption in data transformation is minimised. New systems can rather be a tremendously difficult task for a number of reasons, as managers must decide a proper strategy for integrating the systems in post-merger situations.

Despite the importance of the subject the most important limitation lies in the fact that there are very few academic publications in this field which therefore led to the need for a theory development study. This study has been conducted by two different resources; the IS literature and two case studies for Indian healthcare companies, in which the observations acquired from the literature study were applied to partly structure data collection and to generate further, experienced-based, theoretical observations. The literature review provided arguments for a rather one-dimensional relation between the level of ambition, and the level of IT integration. The literature also proposes some priorities and conditions which intermediate variables on these relationships. These priorities and conditions influence the real choices in the relations between IT integration objectives and methods. The case studies also revealed a number of other variables that influence the choice of the IT integration methods such as (type of IT, location merge, time limitation). It was also shown that the choice of IT integration objectives determines the success of IT integration, thus, has a significant influence on the companies' overall integration. The case studies provide other variables and related suggestions that further expand the model acquired from the literature review. Fig. 3 exhibits the findings that may be used ...