Post-Merger Integrations: In For A Pound, In For A Penny

The Economist once wrote that mergers “are, like second marriages, a triumph of hope over experience. […] Corporate mergers have even higher failure rates than the liaisons of Hollywood stars.” In fact, studies have shown that 60-90% of mergers and acquisitions fall short of expectations. One of the key reasons for the high failure rate is a poorly managed postmerger integration (PMI) process. PMI is an integral part to any merger or acquisition – and the single most important determinant in successfully realizing strategic synergies and maximizing value capture.

This note summarizes Ginkgo Management Consulting’s view on PMI and provides three key success factors to winning in integrations.

Raising the Transparency of the IT Budget: Practical and Profitable

In times of economic hardship, many companies are forced to cut spending rigorously and with a strong call for immediate results. Mostly seen as support or overhead function, IT is not spared.

This note summarizes Ginkgo Management Consulting’s view on how investing in the transparency of its budget can help a company’s IT department to immediately and sustainably reduce its expenditure without hampering business or risking its own future agility.

Gaining a Competitive Lead Through Selective Corporate Cloud Sourcing

Much has been written about cloud computing – often rather in an attempt to exploit the attention the topic currently enjoys in the media than treating it as what it really is, a new delivery model for external data centers that promises companies ondemand access to virtually unlimited computing resources paid for according to actual usage.

In this note, Ginkgo investigates the benefits and risks inherent to cloud computing from the CIO’s perspective and concludes how companies can gain a temporary but sizeable competitive advantage through early and sound preparation for this new sourcing option.

Business Process Outsourcing: What Went Wrong, And Why It Is Still Relevant

After many years of dominating headlines and up to double digit year-on-year growth, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) as a topic has experienced an overall decline in corporate interest of late. However, BPO’s main benefits, namely economies of scale, associated cost savings and the ability for organizations to focus on their core business are as much in demand as ever. So what went wrong?

In this note, Ginkgo Management Consulting analyses the reasons for BPO’s fall from grace in the recent past and why it continues to be a viable option for companies.

How to Lift Corporate IT in Japan Out of Surprisingly Desolate Condition

Much to the surprise of both first timers to Japan on IT-related missions as well as Japanese IT professionals themselves, the state of corporate IT in Japan comes nowhere close to the country’s overall reputation for innovativeness, quality, and efficiency. Operation and maintenance of corporate IT is comparatively expensive and new concepts that help boost IT efficiency all over the world often aren’t introduced until years after their conception. What’s more, the eventual introduction also takes significantly more time, people, and money than comparable projects in most other countries.

In this note, Ginkgo identifies a number of major shortcomings typical of Japanese corporate IT, investigates their root causes, and proposes practical action items designed to help Japan’s CIOs close up to the rest of the world in terms of IT efficiency.