IT Lead - Merger & Acquisitions

Job Description

Involving IT teams early and often during mergers and acquisitions will help realize more value from the operational and market synergies that bring businesses together.

By understanding the business drivers behind mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and being included in the initial stages of the process, IT leaders can contribute significantly to the success of these endeavors.

For this purpose we are looking for an IT M&A Lead who will manage and drive work with cross-functional teams to achieve IT M&A deliverables across all phases of the M&A lifecycle including due-diligence, pre-close, integration and post-merger integration handover process.

As part of IT Due diligence scope, lead and assess the Information Technology (IT) related opportunities and risks activities. Develop an action plan to address gaps. Communicate due diligence results in easy to understand format.
This role will require 40% travel across Europe.
Other responsiblities will include:

• Effectively communicate diligence findings to internal stakeholders, BU & Corporate Developments teams. Provide cost estimations, integration approach, and plans for IT Infrastructure Integrations.
• Work with Cognizant Corporate Development to identify the RAID items (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies) in the M&A IT infrastructure integration.
• Organize, lead, and manage various IT integration workshops for newly acquired companies. Formulate integration strategies that support deal value drivers. Collaborate with multiple technology SME and business stakeholders.
• Propose overall IT infrastructure integration strategy and associated timelines for network, email, voice and endpoint & contract integrations. Ensure approval / sign-off from functional stakeholders such as Business, Corporate Development, Corporate Security and IT leadership team.
• Promote standard, repeatable processes that ensure integration project timelines are consistently achieved.
• Collaborate with acquired entity IT associates to extend Cognizant IT infrastructure standards into the acquired infrastructure footprint. Act as advocate between acquired IT team and Cognizant extended IT team. Evangelist Cognizant IT processes, tools and team structure with the acquired entity teams.
• Represent Cognizant IT during recurring status calls with Corporate Development and internal leadership; present the weekly status on the M&A integrations.
• Develop standard communication plan and associated templates to ensure technical integration activities are easily understood and consumed by end user community.
• Investigate acquired company vendor contracts. Understand the associated procurement needs and risks. Identify synergy opportunities in respect to contract consolidation. Work with Procurement and Vendor Management Office to achieve contract integration.
• Drive evergreen process within our acquisitions playbook and associated documentation sets, applying lessons learned and best practices as part of project retrospective.
• Assist with resource and capacity planning. Mentor and guide other IT M&A team members as assigned.