The Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence (M&A CCoE) – Part 2: Roles and Responsibilities

This blog post is part 2 of a series focused on the Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence (M&A CCoE). In part 1, we introduced the concept of the M&A CCoE. In this blog post, we discuss different roles and responsibilities associated with CCoEs. This post is written from the perspective of a buy-side entity, but the concepts, best practices, and considerations may apply to a wide variety of M&A or customer scenarios. While many organizations will have an existing M&A Integration Management Office (IMO), this post highlights the considerations for roles and responsibilities of a team in a cloud-specific arm of an IMO. We hope that this guidance will help organizations build the right teams to improve security and compliance, streamline their M&A journey, and maximize the value of their cloud investments during M&A transactions.

Introduction to CCOEs and a Rationale for M&A

In the first installment of this series, we introduced the concept of an M&A CCoE, a dedicated cross-functional & cross-organizational team that acts as a central cloud authority and cloud office during an M&A transaction. We also pointed out that M&A CCoEs help customer realize the full value of their cloud investments. Building on this foundation, below we suggest a framework for thinking about the roles and responsibilities of the M&A CCoE.

Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence Roles and Responsibilities

When constructing an M&A CCoE, it is important to consider how the specific M&A scenario will affect the roles and responsibilities of the team. While the specific construct of the M&A CCoE may differ depending on the type of transaction, for example, acquisition, merger, or divestiture, the general core components typically remain the same.

To enable the success of an M&A CCoE, we provide a table of common roles and responsibilities associated with M&A CCoE. Organizations can leverage this table to stand-up their own M&A CCoE or to evaluate an existing one. While each organization and M&A scenario is unique, this table represents AWS recommended best practices. Due to the dynamic nature of M&A, responsibilities may merge over time or a single stakeholder may take on multiple roles. That said, the table below can serve as a guide for organizations seeking to identify gaps, streamline their M&A process, and rapidly achieve technical and business outcomes during M&A transactions.

Example M&A CCoE Roles and Responsibilities

We’ve just discussed a number of different roles on this team. At times, it’s possible that stakeholders (especially from the acquired company) may lose sight of the benefits of the M&A transaction. Members from Corporate Development can solve for this by providing context of the transaction and expected business outcomes to the IT organization and other members of the M&A CCoE. The Corporate Development team can evaluate the success of the IT integration, ensuring that the stakeholder teams are working backwards from the expected synergies. Furthermore, the team can act as an outside voice in the room, adding a “business” and “finance” perspective to technical decision making.

Having representation from the target IT organization is also required for the success of an M&A CCoE. At a minimum, at “Day 0” after closure of the transaction, the M&A CCoE should have a leadership member of the target IT organization incorporated as a primary stakeholder of the M&A CCoE. This could be a CIO, CTO, CISO, or another executive leader with intimate knowledge of the target IT estate. The Target IT organization’s representative provides guidance on all aspects of the target IT estate, helps lead the integration of large/complex application and infrastructure stacks, and motivates the target IT organization’s people by influencing and communicating organizational goals and business outcomes. This stakeholder provides the necessary context around IT culture, people skill sets, standards and compliance, infrastructure philosophy, and other crucial pieces of information that can influence the integration strategy and plan.

As the M&A CCoE matures, it is important that the best practices, considerations, and learnings gathered from past M&A transactions are documented by the M&A CCoE. The M&A CCoE Project Management Office (PMO) is in charge of documenting and sharing this “tribal knowledge”, which allows an organization to incorporate lessons learned iteratively as it grows and conducts future transactions.

Conclusion

With the release of the Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence, organizations can accelerate their M&A transactions’ expected business outcomes, reduce cloud risks and blockers to transaction success, and retain cloud M&A learnings and best practices for future M&A transactions. This post provides a high-level overview of the M&A CCoE and the necessary roles and persona responsibilities. Setting up teams and assigning them these responsibilities are important activities for organizations seeking to innovate while maximizing return on investment during M&A transactions. Please refer to the following links to learn more about how AWS supports digital innovation, cloud operations, cloud governance, and enterprise strategy.

About AWS Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory

The AWS Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory (AWS M&A Advise) Team is a group of subject matter experts at AWS that provide a suite of complimentary advisory engagements to AWS customers engaged in M&A transactions. If your organization is going through an M&A transaction and would like to learn more about how AWS can support you, please reach out to the AWS Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory Team through your organization’s aligned AWS Account Manager with this link.