Most research indicates that M&A activity has an overall success rate of about 50%--basically a coin toss. Yet it is the CIO that is expected to assume the mantle of responsibility for ensuring not only the availability of IT services necessary to support businesses capabilities, but often those businesses capabilities themselves. The difficulty increases exponentially during a merger or acquisition because now, not only are IT leaders trying to ensure the availability of the systems they've built and capabilities that they rely on, but those systems and capabilities of the acquired company which they didn't build, and need to integrate.
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