Going forward, we will be following the trials of Charlie. He’s the CIO of a company called Saxy Inc. that is dedicated to making saxophones. They make a full range of saxes and are really good at it! Charlie has been instrumental in transforming the business into the leading Sax company it is through the digitization of various activities ranging from their CRM system to track all of their vendors and individual purchasers, an e-commerce platform that ties into their ERP system ensuring that they produce just enough of the right type of saxes from the professional jazz cats and the high school marching bands. He’s even in the midst of a multi-year digital transformation plan to re-platform their internal tooling to the cloud.
One day, Charlie’s boss, Al, calls a meeting of the leadership and was quite excited. Kicking off the meeting, he announces to the executive team that he spoke with his good friend Sid, the CEO of Clarinetters Ltd., and they found a perfect plan to corner the woodwind market. Missing from this is the fact that Saxy Inc. has more than twice the market share of Clarinetters Ltd, and this will be a full on acquisition of Clarinetters Ltd.
At this point, several questions should be running through your mind, as they definitely were running through Charlie’s mind as well. Especially since this will be the first M&A he is a part of, and the first of Saxy Inc’s history.
Among some of his questions: What will this look like from an IT perspective? What is the ultimate goal and direction they will be going? When is all of this supposed to happen? What are the short term goals that must be achieved? Are the two systems able to talk to each other? What about the team? Are they swing as well as his band?
The questions kept flowing through Charlie’s head to the point where he didn’t hear Al tell the group that Charlie will be playing first chair to create the great powerhouse that will not only deliver more instruments faster, but also at a significant savings as a combined entity. Oh, and the first major milestones will be 90 days from close. Al wants the deal to close as soon as possible, but also recognizes that some due diligence is required otherwise the deal could go flat.
This series will highlight the saga of how Charlie navigates this arrangement to close Saxy’s first acquisition successfully. There will be tons of questions raised, and decisions to be made along the way, and not everyone will be happy. The deadlines will be tight, and if you are like Charlie, this new challenge will be keeping you up at night for a while. All is not lost though, and we’ll step through this together.