Question 1
The most important and significant assets of the business are the customers. The decisions for the mergers and acquisitions are being made to acquire the trust of the customers they have. Holding the first and preliminary customers is one of the most difficult and toughest jobs, mainly after the merger and acquisition of the organizations. The ownership of the company does not mean to the customers as all they desire and want is the smooth, kind and flat service and treatment. Their expectations remain same that their work must be done in the same system and process as it is used to be done like or even better than before.
The customers never want their work and service to be undergone poor experience either the team in the organization changes or not (Crandell, 2013). Therefore, being a manager of the company in the given case study, I would definitely take care of the customers that either they are happy with the service of the new team or not? Either they are facing problems in terms of new process and functions within the organization or not? Being a manager, I must see if their issues and problems are taking care of or not.
The information technology is one of the best approaches in helping me to meet all the expectations of the customers. If the company was available with the better information storage system earlier to the merger and acquisition, then I would easily find the information about the customers from that storage and can accommodate the information as per needed. It would be very important to me to serve the customers same as they served earlier or even better than that.
With the help of the information technology, it would be easy for me to develop new process and function in the line with the similar expectations of the customers. I could easily track the customers in terms of what their preferences and tastes are before the acquisition and mergers. The customers always feel some fear with the change in the company in the context of the impacts on the quality. The information technology would either play a role of communicator in between the customers and me. The three best examples of the use of information technology for the customer service and care are as follows:
Modern banking services
Telecommunication industry
The providers of Internet service
Question 2
Tribal Knowledge
The term tribal knowledge used by Andi Mann is meant as the knowledge of the organization that is maintained and preserved in the minds of the company’s employees. In most of the cases, the senior and experienced employees of the organization possess the major information in terms of who does when, what, how and why. If these employees might feel the merger or acquisition as unnecessary, then the company could lose the information in the form of these employees that is very important to maintain the acquisition and new system of the organization. The loss of such employees and information could result in the distraction and disturbance of the services of the company to the customers (Tramonte, 2014).
Strategies
Strategies for the acquired organization to deal with the issues are as follows:
Identify those experienced employees and retain them to maintain the primary systems
Retain all those employees as long as the company successfully gain the key knowledge from them
Document the new process and system systematically and thoroughly.
Recommendations
The recommendations are as follows:
It is important for the organization to analyze and evaluate the impacts of such situation on the merger and acquisition
Appraise the desk logs and maintenance log and even the use of emails to get the most useful and key information.
Offer bonuses and rewards to the critical and useful employees in terms of the information.
Question 3
Alternatives
The three best alternatives in merging the companies are as follows:
The mergers are usually begun from the parts that would results in the reduction and saving of cost or make the company able to approach to the strategic objectives. For these purposes, using the information technology, the company can reduce the personnel and the ability of the organization would be increased to influence its resources of data.
The second alternative would be the merger in terms of merging the data into the system of the acquired company and the adoption of the process of the business for that company. In this process, the information technology (IT) would be helpful to transfer the data as well as to the provide training to the key personnel, if anyone is left to work on the new functions and systems (Booz & Company, 2010).
The third alternative is to operate the acquired organization without merging its infrastructure of information technology with least merging the processes and systems. This approach will help the company to undergo in the acquisition without disturbing and distracting its own system of information technology.
References
Booz & Company. (2010). The Role of IT in Successful Merger Integration. Retrieved June 23, 2016, from http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/The_Role_of_IT_in_Successful_Merger_Integration.pdf
Crandell, C. (2013). Why Mergers Kill Customer Value. Retrieved June 23, 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecrandell/2013/02/22/why-mergers-kill-customer-value/#3bed573d5b02
Tramonte, T. (2014). Tribal Knowledge: Five ways it can give employees the full picture. Retrieved June 23, 2016, from http://www.hr.com/en/magazines/all_articles/tribal-knowledge-five-ways-it-can-give-employees-t_i4bemnac.html
