I was asked recently about the best practices in integrating two companies' products into a unified product suite.
I posted a note to Twitter and got these replies:
@ditkis: Banks? JP & Mutual, Wells and Wachovia for geo coverage & service diversification
@DavidWLocke No. I think the literature is very clear, M&As fail. Still the acquiring company does get to keep some things that work.
Three out of four acquisitions fail; they destroy wealth for the buyer's shareholders, who end up worse off than they would have been had the deal not been done. But it doesn't have to be that way, argue the authors. In evaluating acquisitions, companies must look beyond the lure of profits the income statement promises and examine the balance sheet, where the company keeps track of capital. It's ignoring the balance sheet that causes so many acquisitions to destroy shareholders' wealth
In a case I'm familiar with, two companies with complementary product lines merged. My product was the only one in direct competition within the two companies. I think we did the ideal integration, choosing the best features from each product to create a new superset suite. But it was an incredible political problem--not a technical one. Sales people got involved. The branding loonies did too. So did executives who hadn't seen a line of code in decades. Yeesh.
In the end, I spent most of my energy on getting the politics out of the way. The developers created the best-of-both with a clear path for our customers. And don't just think programs: many changes will require customers to convert data and scripts too. (Think of the reaction the world had to Office 2007. See "I Hate Office 2007" at http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.455976.20 )
People don't want better as often as they want consistency. Make the change painless to your customers and do your best to ignore the irrelevant complaints from within the building.
