And to further complicate matters, it’s a carve out. Tick tock, tick tock. The transition service agreement is running out. You know, how can we stand up secure infrastructure that enables the business to get where it needs to get to, or at least to the next level, in the four or five months we need to make that happen. Tops; if I’ve got that much time at all.
Aaron:
I would say it’s 90% change management, 10% technology.
Chuck:
Right.
Aaron:
It’s so difficult. Despite how bad the systems are and how poorly they’re run, people get efficient with bad practices. And they like the idea of putting something brand new in, but hate the process of getting there.
Once they get to the point of implementing something new, they’re fine. But it often takes nine months to convince end users that they need to do something different. Change management is a big thing.
Chuck:
People are creatures of habit.
And again, depending on the deal—how many people you’re getting, how hard are they having to work, and how much change are they having to absorb very quickly. It’s particularly cantankerous when we’re dealing with the carve outs. And there’s more of them coming, you know.
Aaron:
I agree with that. There will be a lot more carve outs and strategic acquisitions, add-ons, and tuck ins, and so forth. And those come with their own issues, as you said.
The other element related to technology is the culture of the firm itself. How do they operate themselves? Are they very agile? Can they make quick decisions? Can they download things and do whatever they want?
The bigger you get, obviously, the bigger risks come about. The best run organizations, like IT organizations, are the ones that have common practices, common tools. Something they can manage efficiently.
It’s when they start getting Apple and Google and Microsoft, all these products in place, and they don’t have the technology team that can actually manage all that stuff. That’s when they run into these issues.
Chuck:
Definitely. And with the cloud being part of the problem, if you will, with people having to adapt to that, you now have much more of a business focus to IT than you had in the past.
I mean, at the end of the day, your provider is supposed to be taking a lot of that stuff off of your back. And what you should be doing is managing the application, managing the process, and adapting people to that process.
I’ve just come back from a leadership conference for private equity, and everybody was talking about people, people, people. That’s where the struggle is.
Devin:
Some of the challenges that we need to be considering are that a lot of states are starting to create laws that are imposing more data security and privacy governance—the regulatory aspects—even in the non-tech sector.
I know as I’ve worked with companies, particularly in the health care space where they have these great compliance departments, they have a lot of process in place; but a lot of that doesn’t always bleed over into the technology team.
So if you’re going through a merger, it’s even a larger challenge, right? You say, OK, we’ve actually got our regulatory compliance and governance in place, but now we’re going to buy this other company and how do we merge some of those challenges.