Integration during a merger and acquisition (M&A) is a different beast from your typical internal system integration effort. The CIOs who have survived an M&A talk about it with the same heart-quickening cadence an adrenaline junkie uses to describe an extreme sport. If an integration project of the sort discussed in the rest of the CIO-100 issue is the IT equivalent of surfing?requiring a CIO to stay on top of the project’s breaking waves?then integration during an M&A is like sky surfing: It’s riskier and you’re traveling much faster.

Integration during an M&A is not a simple IT project but part of a bigger business goal. Too often, companies engaging in mergers or acquisitions ignore the IT scalability of their new business partner or their own systems. It’s not that companies should make or break business decisions based on the IT architecture of the company they plan to join or take over, but it is important to have up-front knowledge of how the IT merger is likely to go. A slow or poorly handled IT integration between merging companies can jeopardize the business goals. So once an M&A is set in motion, the CIO’s role is to make sure that the IT integration happens fast and smoothly.

All successful M&As therefore come down to one thing: planning. Because of the emphasis on speed, most of the work during an M&A is done before the hands-on integration work begins. Stephen N. David, CIO and B2B officer of Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, a CIO-100 honoree, says that 75 percent of an integration effort during a merger or acquisition is determining which systems to keep, what data is important and how much integration is actually needed before the companies are technically joined. Once that kind of planning is complete, the actual hands-on work should be just like any other IT project?only a little more exciting.

Read on for a primer from some of our CIO-100 honorees that have led successful M&As and are willing to share lessons in integrating systems as swiftly as possible.

Know Thyself

Once your company has decided that it plans to grow via mergers or acquisitions, the first step for the CIO is to come up with a detailed map of the company’s IT infrastructure and communicate to the other executives the company’s readiness to do an M&A. Even before a merger or acquisition candidate is chosen, the CIO needs to have explicit knowledge of his own architecture and what the most important systems are, says David.