Acquiring a company is an exciting challenge for any entrepreneur, but it is also very risky. How can a deteriorating situation be turned around? Or even more difficult: how can you further improve the performance of a company that is already doing well?
Generally, a full audit of the IT system (operational effectiveness, performance, capacity for future development) is part of the overall audit of the production tools. This comes on top of accounting, financial, legal, tax, HR or industrial audits. No more, no less.
I’m acquiring a company… Why should I bother about its IT systems?
The information system (or IS) covers all the hardware and software in a company. It is the driving force behind the business. The information system sits at the heart of all processes: it determines how every department operates, structures management, and organises production and administration. In short, it is one of the main levers for future performance gains, and it would be unthinkable not to look at it closely.
And yet, it is often underestimated by the future buyer…
My company is not / hardly IT-enabled
One example among many: commercial performance. The CRM The ERP software module is a solution designed to better organise your business processes. Where your sales team used to manage prospects in a very manual way, they will now have a system within this software tool to structure their follow‑ups, enabling them to significantly increase their sales – with revenue growth of up to 30%! With a good CRM, you can have better pipeline management.
My company is already well IT-enabled....
Why modernise your information system?
But even if your company is already well IT-enabled, it is just as critical to look into this. IT is evolving at great speed, and what was still impossible a few years ago is very likely to be achievable today.
Take multi-site operations as an example. If your company has several locations and was computerised about ten years ago, it is very likely that you were forced to design processes on a site-by-site basis. Today, with the advent of the Cloud, you can design your processes in a far more integrated way – opening up new possibilities for organisation and collaboration!
We could multiply such examples endlessly – mobility, for instance. Your sales team did not have smartphones or tablets 10 years ago… simply because they did not exist yet. Today’s software (at least the good ones) are designed from the ground up to be used on these new devices.
