Productization for Consistent Data & Product Understanding in Mergers and Acquisitions

Abstract

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) often lead to combined or supplementary offerings, where the products, or services of the merging or acquiring companies are integrated into a new combined product portfolio. Nevertheless, integrating the offerings can be challenging due to structural differences or inconsistencies in the products. Systematizing product-related data assets may also be necessary to ensure a smooth integration process and optimization of operations. A structured, consistent foundation for product data might be needed to combine, migrate, and manage data across different systems. Nevertheless, the systematization of data assets during M&A may also be challenging. This study explores combining the offerings through product structure and productization focus to address the challenges in the consistency of products and data. An example of integrating offerings during M&A is presented. The findings indicate the potential of productization logic through a commercial and technical focus on the product structure in unifying the offering and gaining consistency in data. The approach may allow for identifying complementarities and overlapping offerings and resources to achieve synergies in marketing & sales and delivery. The presented logic may serve as a vehicle for integrating the business processes and information technology (IT) systems of two companies by providing a uniform structure for product data that different business processes create, use, and store in various IT systems.

Keywords

• mergers and acquisitions
• productization
• product data management
• product portfolio management