Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are often wrought with challenges, particularly around technology integration and cost reductions. 

According to a BCG survey, four of the most commonly cited reasons by respondents (50% or more) for M&A failure relate to post-merger integration. They include poor integration, low synergy, difficult cultural fit, and high complexity. 

Mergers, acquisitions, and the technologies that connect them

A content management system (CMS) is a core feature of any enterprise tech stack and can often be a difficult hurdle in the M&A process. Every enterprise has its processes, trusted software, or vendor. Change can be taxing and lead to issues such as the use of shadow IT.

Does your organization have an effective plan for M&A technology integration? Failing to devise one can result in duplicate applications (such as managing two separate CMSs) and siloed teams, potentially driving up operating costs. 

During M&A, if you’ve found yourself wondering what CMS to keep, leave out or adopt, then this piece can help simplify the process of choosing a CMS. 

Is it time to change your CMS?

When undergoing a merger or acquisition, it’s crucial to ask which CMS is most suitable for your newly combined organization. While there are several answers to this, remember that a CMS is the foundation of all customer experiences. It should be a key consideration during M&A, as it connects with several other third-party tools to guide customers across your digital touchpoint.

Beyond the experience, management is under pressure to streamline costs, reduce duplicate applications, and enable better workflows and integrations. That will mean deciding on which CMS to adopt. Some of the questions you might ask yourself are:

• Are any of your current CMS options flexible enough to meet future needs?

• Is there a better CMS on the market? 

• If so, do you have the budget or resources to leverage them?

One important thing to note here is that your CMS choice after an M&A plays a vital role in ensuring the best digital experiences for your customers. 

Read more: Considerations When Migrating Out Of Legacy Cloud Suites (Adobe, IBM, Oracle)

Things to consider when choosing a new CMS for your M&A

The following are factors to consider when selecting a CMS during a merger or acquisition:

Architecture

After an M&A, you want to grow and scale your business. Before choosing a new CMS, it’s vital to consider its underlying architecture. Unlike the rigid and limited nature of a traditional CMS, headless and hybrid CMS both facilitate the integration of best-of-breed services, enabling you to scale up or scale down your architecture to fit your business needs. 

Key questions to ask include:

• Is the CMS a headless, hybrid, or traditional CMS?

• Does it support omnichannel delivery?

• Does it align with MACH architecture?

Developer-Marketer Flexibility

Another consideration that’s important to your M&A is the autonomy and flexibility of your marketer and developer teams. With two companies coming together, there are multiple channels to manage. In essence, enterprises should aspire to provide marketers and developers with a platform that enables them to show their best work. 

Here are some things you should consider:

• Is it integrable with other best-of-breed platforms such as CRM or CDP?

• Is it front-end agnostic?

• Is it easy to learn and simple to use for non-technical people?

• Is it a marketer-friendly platform with WYSIWYG, drag, and drop, and content preview features?

Customer Experience

The goal of any M&A is to help enterprises build better products and services and increase customer loyalty. As a result, enterprises need to take customer experience into account when choosing a CMS.

The questions to ask here include:

• How does the CMS optimize customer experiences?

• Does it offer composable DXP capabilities? How easy is it to integrate unique services and features to enhance its capabilities?

Sales and Marketing

M&As are often accompanied by a brand name change, a new website, and several marketing campaigns and initiatives. Having a CMS that can support these processes is crucial to attaining success early. 

Consider the following:

• Does the platform offer advanced SEO ranking capabilities?

• Does it provide custom templates for marketers to set up campaigns?

• Does it provide consistent experiences across all devices?

• Does it ensure a faster time to market?

• Does it support sales enablement efforts such as lead capture and CRO, or integrate easily with services that provide these capabilities?

Maintenance Requirements

Considering the number of processes involved in a merger or acquisition, enterprises should strive to enable automation as much as possible. This will reduce their workload and ensure they are focused on more productive tasks. That way, you can substantially relieve the heavy workload of managing your CMS infrastructure, reduce operating costs, and boost innovation.

Here are some things you should consider:

• Is the CMS maintenance intensive?

• Does it provide automated updates and maintenance?

• Does your CMS provider have a dedicated support team to answer questions on the fly as you develop and maintain your website?

Why you should consider Zesty.io as your CMS after a merger or acquisition

Zesty.io is an enterprise-grade hybrid headless CMS that can make managing content during an M&A an easier process. Here are a few reasons why:

• Hybrid architecture: Zesty.io combines the decoupled nature of a headless CMS with the frontend capabilities of a traditional CMS, giving you the best of both worlds.

• Automated upgrades: With Zesty.io, your developers can work on more productive tasks and reduce manual overhead by leveraging a CMS with automated maintenance and upgrades. 

• Omnichannel marketing: The goal of every enterprise is to deliver seamless and consistent experiences across any digital touchpoint. By leveraging Zesty.io, you can enable omnichannel marketing.

• Developer autonomy: Zesty.io is a front-end agnostic CMS that lets developers build UIs with any language or framework they desire while reducing the amount of involvement in managing the platform. 

• Marketer friendly: When using Zesty.io, marketers can rely on a CMS that supports all their campaign initiatives. 

• Engaging digital experiences: You can build your digital experience platform (DXP) with Zesty.io, leveraging best-of-breed services to help future-proof your stack.

Streamline your M&A with a flexible enterprise-ready CMS

There’s an adage, “if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail”. This also applies to mergers and acquisitions. You don’t want to wait until it's too late before aligning your teams and reducing silos across all technologies and processes. The burden of managing several disparate technologies can be overbearing and detrimental if you’re unprepared. 

When choosing a CMS in an M&A, it’s best to consider a hybrid, headless CMS that can plug into any service you’re currently using or want to migrate to, ensure engaging customer experiences across multiple channels, and reduce operating workload. Zesty.io is a great CMS option that readily meets all the criteria when choosing a CMS during an M&A.

Want to learn more about this enterprise-grade CMS? Get in touch with Zesty.io today.