Post-merger integration
The homepage states the core question: what needs to be in place on Day 1, and who carries the synergy that looks right on paper. This page shows how the tool gives shape to that step by step, from the first intake to the dashboard that keeps running after the deal.
You supply what has already been established about the deal: the deal thesis, the main value drivers, and the entities coming together. That can be an investment memo, a term sheet, or simply a list of assumptions that up to now only existed verbally.
The intake is divided into blocks — thesis, value drivers, entities, contact persons per organizational unit — and those blocks can be filled in separately by different people. The corporate developer fills in the deal-thesis block, the person responsible for finance the value drivers, HR or legal the entity data. No one needs to know the complete picture in a single session; the tool merges the blocks into one file.
The time here mostly goes into retrieving existing documents and getting a clear view of what the deal thesis actually claims, not into filling in fields itself.
What comes in from the intake is here converted into a synergy baseline: a list in which each mentioned synergy is broken down into four parts — the source, the owner, the timeline, and a testable assumption. A synergy that only exists as "cost savings on procurement" is here forced into a form that remains explainable: which procurement category, who is responsible, when must it be visible, and what is the assumption that can be checked afterwards.
That remaining explainable is the starting point of all of what it is: the tool adds nothing that cannot be derived from the supplied data. No synergy level is predicted and no probability of success is calculated — only what has been assigned and what is still floating is made visible.
The wizard goes through the synergies one by one; how much time that takes depends on how many synergies have been entered and how clearly the owner and timeline were already established before the intake.
From the entity data and the synergy baseline, two documents are built. The Day 1 plan is a checklist dataset covering legal structure, contracts, payments, access, and communication — the matters that simply have to work on the first day, regardless of strategy. The Day 100 plan sorts decisions by cost of uncertainty: what costs the most if it stays unresolved for too long, and what can wait without value draining away.
This is also where the fixed question per section sits about what will and will not be integrated — because integrating itself can destroy value if it goes further than the deal thesis justifies. The generator forces that question for every checklist section, rather than leaving it as a separate discussion.
Once the plans are in place, the integration office itself functions as a tool. Benefit tracking per synergy with traffic lights and clocks shows which synergy is on schedule and which has stalled. There is a decision-forum agenda, an overview of dependencies between workstreams, and a key-person risk list based on role — who carries knowledge that exists nowhere else, not who performs well or poorly.
This dashboard continues through to the monthly recalibration: the synergy baseline and the clocks are compared against reality again, so that deviations become visible early rather than only at year-end closing. With successive acquisitions, the standard 100-day approach can be saved as a reusable configuration, so the next deal doesn't start from zero again.
A second or third run-through of the same synergy baseline — for example three months later — shows which assumptions have held up and which owners and timelines have shifted. That is not a prediction of the end result, but a comparison between what was assigned and what actually happened. In a series of acquisitions, that same repetition is also the basis for the reusable Day 1/Day 100 configuration: patterns that keep recurring don't need to be reinvented every time.
There is no completed PMI track record to show as a reference; the tool structures the file, it does not prove a track record. The synergy baseline makes assumptions testable, but does not guarantee synergy realization — what is actually realized depends on execution, market conditions, and decisions that fall outside the tool. And the key-person risk list is role-based: it contains no judgment of individuals, only visibility into where knowledge is concentrated.
Anyone who wants to use the three documents and the dashboard themselves receives templates for decision forums and communication along with it. Anyone who prefers to have part of it guided can bring in a partner for organizational design, culture, and leadership, while the tool keeps maintaining the file. And anyone who wants to fully outsource the integration office can have a partner staff it — on their own system, with the same data structure. More about what these three routes concretely deliver can be found on the outcomes page, and the background on synergy planning and Day 1 checklists can be found in the knowledge base.
All of this remains on paper until it is translated into who performs which task at what moment, in which system. That translation step — from file to hours, tasks, and tooling — is precisely where the work scan from FTE TO AI begins.
Vraag maar wat er op Day 1 moet staan, of wat integreren juist kapotmaakt.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.