Saturday, August 14, 2004

Committing to Agility

The benefits of M&As can be lost if IT and business leaders don't act quickly to make staffing and organizational decisions, integrate systems and provide training.

(A 2001 KPMG study, for example, claimed that 70 percent of M&A deals fail to deliver shareholder value, and 31 percent actually destroy value because of too much focus on closing a deal and too little focus on making it succeed.)

Agility is key in Postmerger integration. In an interesting CIO article (Come Together Right Now - - CIO Magazine Aug 15,2004) Kennametal, Palm Inc and Toshiba America are metioned as M&A success stories weaving a common thread: They wouldn't have been written had these companies not committed to the concept of agility.