Post-Merger Integration of Two Regional Tech Firms

When two companies merge, the paperwork makes it look manageable. What the paperwork doesn't capture is 280 people across four cities who woke up on day one wondering whether their job still existed, whether their manager still had authority to approve their expenses, and what tools they'd be using next week. The merger agreement required a unified operating model within 90 days. There was no playbook. Both leadership teams were managing perception rather than reality, and both knew it.

Our PMI lead embedded from day one. Their first action was not a Gantt chart, it was listening. Three cities in week one. What they heard was that both organisations had the same fear: that the other side's way of doing things would win. That shaped the integration design more than any spreadsheet. The 90-day playbook covered 120 workstreams. Technology was the most visible: six overlapping tools rationalised to two. But the harder work was the org structure conversations that no one wanted to have on record.