Turning M&A risk into IT reward

After a bumpy couple of years, Europe’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market is busy again. By mid-2025, deal volumes were up between 15 and 20% year-on-year, according to IMG. If the trend continues, this will be one of Europe’s strongest years for dealmaking over this past decade.

While M&A presents major opportunity, it demands change management, as well as cultural and business alignment and technology integration. For IT leaders, the rise in M&A activity presents unique challenges. Although deals aim to accelerate growth, from a technological perspective, a merger or acquisition often introduces unknowns and significant risks. Mismanaged integration can slow or even reverse growth if technology isn’t reviewed and planned well.

When two entities come together, their technology estates rarely align. Each may have different IT infrastructures, applications, cloud maturity, and approaches to risk and compliance. Harmonizing the tech stacks is more than a technical effort; it requires making choices about which systems to keep, how to standardize processes, and ways to minimize disruption. If mismanaged, integration can drain resources, delay workflows, and put ROI at risk.

Nick Reeks, director of IT at Tata Steel says: “The integration of systems, and interfacing between them, is the hardest, most complex part of IT. If you’ve got multiple systems, you get issues with master data, timing, data availability, protocols, and more. The complexity is huge and you need a third-party to help manage it.”

Taking a phased approach

Tata Communications is no stranger to these M&A scenarios. It has a track record of helping European businesses navigate: overlapping infrastructures, competing governance models, and conflicting security standards. Its Digital Fabric enables enterprises to orchestrate complex integrations across network, cloud, interactions, and IoT environments.

It follows a methodology: breaking integration into phases, establishing quick wins around security, identity and compliance, then moving onto longer-term application and service consolidation. This approach ensures business continuity while simplifying and unifying technology landscapes.

The starting point is in-depth discovery and assessment. Both the acquiring and acquired companies don’t always know what assets they have inherited within the acquired entity’s IT infrastructure. In effect, they’re presented with a black box that needs investigating.

Amit Mehrotra, Vice President, Head of United Kingdom and Ireland at Tata Communications says: “Only when they look inside their new entity do acquiring companies discover what they’ve really bought, from an IT point of view. We take a consultative, next-generation, tools-based approach to map the complexity, maturity level, and variations of the inherited IT environment.”

Thomas Achhorner, Chief Digital and Information Officer at sustainability advisory firm ERM says: “Technology is a main enabler of bringing two companies and their cultures together. Seamless communication and data sharing allow new colleagues to work together and unlock the synergies behind the merger. IT is on the critical path. Consolidation projects are complex, multi-phase undertakings that often take more time than functions such as operations, HR, or finance.”

Without rigorous discovery, assessment, and experienced consultation, IT integration stumbles at the first hurdle. The key to faster success is a unified view across technologies, vendors, and partners.

From visibility to integration

Once discovery is complete, it’s easier to create a blueprint for a single, integrated architecture and a structured approach to migrate networks, applications, and data.

“Often the real challenge isn’t just mapping systems, but onboarding an acquired entity into the parent organization,” says Mehrotra. “You have to move devices, align policies, and ensure regulatory compliance – often under tight deadlines and without disrupting day-to-day operations.”

These efforts involve aligning: networks with identity and security, customer data sets, cloud platforms, and unified communications and collaboration tools, often from different vendors

and maturity levels. There is often discussion and focus about which best practices and technologies should remain unchanged to minimize the risk of disruption.

For example, Tata Communications assesses the “as-is” landscape, leveraging its ThreadSpan platform to create an end-to-end topology. It then consolidates multiple platform versions into a single solution across network, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and security domains. The goals are to improve productivity, consistency, and simplicity.

Amit Kapoor, Vice President and Head of Europe, Tata Communications, says: “Our Digital Fabric is key to this approach. It brings together network technology, cloud platforms, interactions, and IoT applications into a single orchestration and management layer. This simplifies the combined IT infrastructure after an M&A and gives enterprises visibility and control over the entire environment.”

Tata Communications helped a global logistics firm integrate a newly acquired business spanning 100+ sites across 13 countries, automating migration of 2,000+ devices with zero defects. Purpose-built tools enabled 80% higher efficiency, real-time tracking, and seamless connectivity across Wi-Fi, LAN, WAN, and security systems.

Faster time to value through IT

M&A is a core part of corporate life but often a major headache for IT. M&A journeys start with the challenge of realizing value quickly while defining common policies, standards, and best practices. Then comes rationalizing merged tech stacks, avoiding duplication, and moving data securely. Without the right approach, integration can stall and ROI is at risk.

M&A acceleration comes from a structured approach: rapid discovery to map assets; clear integration priorities – from identity and compliance to critical networks and collaboration tools; and phased consolidation that ensures business continuity while harmonizing applications, data, and services.

Ravi Rao, Cloud Operations Manager, EMEA Infrastructure, Ricoh Europe says: “In an M&A transaction, IT plays a pivotal role in reducing timelines. By consolidating networks, standardizing identities, and adopting cloud-smart strategies, you can give newly integrated teams a seamless experience.”

With an experienced partner, the process of knitting together two companies can go more smoothly. Tata Communications’ Digital Fabric provides the orchestration to simplify sprawling estates, embed consistent governance, and provide full visibility. Ultimately what feels like a high-stakes project can reliably generate enormous business value and see M&A benefits realized faster.

Discover how Tata Communications has helped clients reduce risks and accelerate transformation around M&A activities. Learn more here.