Ask most acquirers about integration and they talk about people and culture. Both matter. But in our experience, integrations that go wrong usually go wrong in the systems first: two finance packages that never reconcile, a CRM nobody trusts, client data spread across personal inboxes. The people problems often start there.
Before completion
Technology diligence is not a box-ticking exercise. Before we complete, we want to know where the data lives, who has access to it, what is licensed and to whom, which systems the business depends on day to day, and what would break if a key person left tomorrow. We also want to know what clients have been promised — hosting terms, service levels, data processing commitments — because those promises transfer with the business.
Days one to thirty: control
The first month is about control, not change. Admin access to every system moves to the group. Domains, hosting accounts and supplier contracts are confirmed and documented. Security basics are checked: multi-factor authentication, backups, leavers’ accounts closed. Nothing visible changes for clients.
Days thirty to sixty: finance and reporting
The second priority is the numbers. The business moves onto the group’s finance platform and chart of accounts, its revenue rules are aligned with ours, and it starts producing the same monthly reporting as every other company in its vertical. This is the step that makes everything else measurable.
Days sixty to one hundred: delivery systems
Then come the systems people use to do the work: project management, CRM, time recording, client support. These migrate onto the shared platforms for the vertical, with history brought across where it is useful and archived where it is not. This is where most of the effort goes, and where most of the long-term benefit comes from. A team working in the same tools as its colleagues can share work, cover for each other and be managed on the same rhythm.
After a hundred days
By the end of the period the business should be on group systems, reporting on group terms, and ready for the more interesting work: applying In-gage’s tooling to remove manual effort from delivery. That is where technology stops being an integration cost and starts changing the economics of the business.
What we have learned
Plan it before completion. Do it in a fixed order. Tell clients early about anything they will notice. And resist the temptation to keep the old system running just in case — parallel running is where integrations go to stall.