Mergers & Acquisitions: 100 Days to a Successful Integration

Program Highlights

• The role of corporate culture in the success—or failure—of any merger.
• Reaching out to your constituencies: employees, customers, analysts and shareholders.
• The importance of the 100 days before and after a merger.

In 2003, PeopleSoft acquired J.D. Edwards. Throughout the process, Ram Gupta was PeopleSoft's point man at J.D. Edwards' headquarters in Denver. Gupta discusses the details behind the company's decision to make this acquistion and the process of merging the two companies. He shares best practices and personal anecdotes behind the merger.

Gupta explains that the 100 days preceding mergers and acquisitions present decision makers with a critical "make or break" opportunity. This is your chance to ask the hard questions, and clearly establish why you are getting into the relationship in the first place. Once the merger comes to pass, the next 100 days must be focused on execution: defining and communicating a road map for the newly formed company. This is the time to make the cold, tough call about people and about the structure of the organization. Then, as you work to meet expectations and validate the success metrics you established early on, you progress to the final phase in which you benefit from the synergies you've created, and begin to generate entirely new opportunities.

Prior to joining Cast Iron Systems, Gupta served as Executive Vice President at PeopleSoft and held positions with WebMD Corp, Silicon Graphics, and IBM. He has a master's degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Gupta also holds several US patents.