Build a Project Charter:<\/strong> Build a charter document that outlines the project plan, resource requirements, timing, objectives, stakeholders, and how you will carry out the project. The project charter recaps the project’s scope into a comprehensive document you will use throughout the due diligence process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nStep 2: Assess Current State<\/h2>\n
To assess the current state in your IT due diligence, the acquiring company must gather information through interviews, system audits, and relevant documentation. Evaluating the IT infrastructure, including business operations software and licensing, will allow the acquiring company to better understand whether the interests of the two businesses align strategically and provide insights into the target company\u2019s system capabilities, future investment needs and IT risks.<\/strong><\/p>\nAs mentioned, other key areas when assessing the current state include the target company\u2019s IT risks. Cybersecurity, data loss protection, contract liabilities, technology, cost base and employee flight risks are some of the areas you should evaluate.<\/p>\n
Because the acquired company\u2019s legal obligations may transfer to the purchasing company, ensuring a comprehensive current state assessment will help keep companies from engaging in time-consuming and costly legal disputes.<\/p>\n
Once you\u2019ve had conversations with leaders, IT staff and other parties and carefully documented your findings, you\u2019re ready for analysis. This is the final step of assessing the current state and will prepare you to create a final report you can present to both acquiring company and target company leaders.<\/p>\n
Review all information collected and answer critical questions such as:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- How do the IT governance process, architecture and budget align with the objectives of the company?<\/li>\n
- Are there gaps in technology that will require significant investments?<\/li>\n
- What risks and vulnerabilities exist?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This process also enables you to find opportunities, whether it\u2019s to prepare for company growth, to acquire technology, to synergize operations, or other driving factors for the acquisition, which will help you integrate post-merger.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s easy to overlook technology in due diligence, but taking the right steps to evaluate processes is essential in planning post-merger activities as the deal progresses. And while conducting due diligence is not easy, it\u2019s well worth the effort to identify assets and risks that may assist in overall negotiations and help ensure there are no surprises after the merger or acquisition.<\/p>\n
In the final blog in this series, we\u2019ll discuss post-merger integration, which covers the final two steps in our assessment approach: designing the future state and building a roadmap and execution plan.<\/p>\n
\nReady to get started with IT due diligence? Ask yourself these questions first.<\/h4>\n
DOWNLOAD OUR ASSESSMENT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In part two of our due diligence blog series, we lay out the essential elements of conducting an IT due diligence assessment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":32066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19480,19108],"coauthors":[15012],"class_list":["post-32062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cio-services","tag-it-strategy","resource-categories-blogs","orbitmedia_post_topic-it-strategy"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-09-14 12:03:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32062"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32062"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=32062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}