Specialism 03 — Glendower Advisory

Post-Acquisition Integration

The Problem

Most acquisitions get absorbed. Very few get stabilised.

The deal itself is the easy part — legal, finance, the announcement. What actually determines whether an acquisition works is what happens in the following ninety days: which technology gets kept and which gets sunset, which people leave because nobody gave them a reason to stay, and whether the team's identity survives the move or gets quietly erased.

Most acquirers treat integration as a project with a timeline. It isn't. It's a leadership problem with a narrative attached — and if you don't own the narrative, the team writes their own, usually starting with "the good old days."

I've run integration from both sides of the table: as the person absorbing an acquired team and technology, and as the founder whose own business got acquired. That matters, because the failure modes look different depending on which side you're standing on — and most advisors have only ever stood on one.

The Approach

The technology decision is a people decision wearing a different hat.

When a platform is being sunset, the real work isn't the migration plan — it's giving the team a credible reason to move their identity onto the surviving technology instead of grieving the one that's going away. When a delivery model already works, the real risk is the acquirer rebuilding it from scratch instead of scaling what's already proven. And when it's your own business being acquired, the job is protecting exactly what made it worth buying, rather than letting it get flattened into someone else's process.

Proven, Not Theoretical

I've been on both sides of an acquisition, more than once — not advising from outside it.

2 acquisitions lived through personally — as integrator, and as the founder being acquired
6→140 PS organisation built by carrying one delivery model through an acquisition, not rebuilding it
Standing start built the European arm of Cirrus10 from scratch, through to its acquisition by Lucidworks

Case Studies

Vignette: Retraining a Team Off a Dying Platform

The challenge. An acquired technology stack was clearly on its way out. The team's skills, and a good part of their professional identity, were built on a platform with no future.

The fix. Had the team retrain from VB to J2EE, actively promoted their skillset onto the incumbent technology, and pushed them not to dwell on "the good old days." The message wasn't "your platform is dead" — it was "here's where your expertise goes next."

The outcome. The team moved onto the surviving technology without the identity crisis and attrition that usually comes with a sunset platform.

Carrying the Model Through the Acquisition: Tower Technology → OpenText

The challenge. When OpenText acquired Tower Technology, the usual risk is that a parent company rebuilds what already worked, rather than scaling it.

The fix. The offshore delivery and financial model was already built and proven at Tower Technology. Rather than let it get lost in the acquisition, kept the SVP of PS regularly updated with the numbers and performance — which is what sparked the idea to roll the model out across all OpenText products.

The outcome. The team grew from 6 to 140 people over three to four years. The model didn't just survive the acquisition. It became the acquirer's standard.

Cirrus10 → Lucidworks: Integration From the Other Side of the Table

The challenge. Built the European arm of Cirrus10 from a standing start. Lucidworks acquired the business for exactly two things: the ability to execute on professional services, and a real depth of knowledge about what actually mattered to eCommerce clients. The risk in that kind of acquisition is that the acquired team's edge gets diluted the moment they're folded into someone else's process.

The fix. Made sure EMEA and APAC sales leadership understood, explicitly, the value the PS team was bringing to their sales cycles — not just to delivery after a deal closed. Partnered hard on sales activity as well as delivery, and built the model for cross-functional collaboration between the two. It meant standing up for what the acquired team was actually worth, and persuading people who didn't yet have a reason to believe it.

The outcome. Kept the business standing through the transition, and was trusted afterward to lead the combined EMEA & APAC organisation as Managing Director — running the acquirer's business as well as the one built from nothing.

Thinking

Let's talk

If any of this sounds familiar, let's have a conversation. I work with a small number of businesses at any one time. Fit and timing matter to me as much as they do to you.

The diagnostic is £18,000, fixed scope, four weeks, with a board-ready report and a prioritised roadmap at the end. Fractional leadership to implement it runs from £9,600/month, two days a week flexing to three, typically a three-month engagement. If you move to fractional within 30 days, the diagnostic fee is credited against month one.

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