Implementing SOA Strategy Post-Acquisition
How can newlywed organizations get focused on growth, when all the complexity of different systems is getting in the way? One way is to loosely couple internal services and systems in both companies to cultivate growth with external parties without uprooting operations.

SOA lets the systems of acquiring and acquired companies interoperate without restructuring the enterprises or replacing underlying systems. By allowing systems to interoperate, the company can immediately tie together existing systems to cross-sell and up-sell offerings through all of its channels; to accelerate the channel; and to enhance service levels.

Growth-driving systems to be considered when developing a post-acquisition SOA strategy include:

• E-cataloging across channels
• Complex product and bundled pricing across channels
• Complex order orchestration
• Integrated supply chain visibility

Case in Point: Sterling Commerce
It's important to consider whether a company is equipped for SOA-based integration when seeking to acquire them. Starting in 2005, Sterling Commerce set out to acquire supply chain capabilities and multi-channel selling capabilities to sell on top of its own SOA-based offerings. But unlike other competitors, Sterling only pursued acquisitions that met its SOA strategy. When acquired, each of these companies was SOA-based and so interoperated easily with Sterling's existing system to deliver the improved products. With the addition of Comergent, Sterling was able to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end order management solution that will help companies increase revenue and reduce costs and order fulfillment lead times. Adding Nistevo enabled Sterling to provide customers with a complete state-of-the-art supply chain management system from a single vendor that improves visibility and control over the entire supply chain - from order to shipment. The acquisition of Yantra let Sterling Commerce deliver supply chain products that already had high market acceptance.

And we're drinking our own champagne because to enable cross-channel selling of all of our built and bought products, we're in the process of implementing our own SOA-based multi-channel selling solution right on top of our existing systems. By deploying this we can offer all of our acquired products alongside our existing product lines through one customer and partner interface. We can quickly launch new prices and bundles in the marketplace to accelerate sales of existing and new products through all of our channels.

SOA: A Framework for Post-Acquisition Renovation
SOA-based business-to-business integration lets companies create, manage, and deploy any business service across any channel - inside or outside enterprise boundaries - and assist with all the growth strategies mentioned above. By first applying an SOA for interfaces outside companies, two merging businesses can provide a unified front to external parties and begin harvesting opportunities for growth long before welding together internal systems and processes.

When companies are considering SOA strategies, they should start with revenue-producing projects that connect to partners, suppliers, and customers. Focusing on growth maximizes shareholder value. Companies should apply integration to one business problem at a time - but they can shorten the time it takes to do this by using an SOA strategy. Applied thoughtfully and incrementally, SOA helps companies successfully complete post-merger integrations by allowing systems to interoperate without restructuring the enterprises or replacing the underlying infrastructure.

Enterprises have complex, interwoven underlying IT systems similar to the utility, transportation, and plumbing systems of a city. SOA is a framework for renovating enterprise systems so that, when they merge, they can be quickly and cost-effectively rerouted, combined, and reallocated without having to weld code together haphazardly or dig up hardware, rip it out, and replace it. SOA is the key to achieving rapid interoperability, which keeps critical systems such as sales and customer service running and optimizes the deployment of existing assets toward priority growth opportunities.

Custom Integration No More
With SOA, internal systems and processes may never need to be manually integrated again. At least, not in the way they are today - with an army of developers connecting disparate legacy systems with custom code that breaks with each application or server upgrade. At the same time, with SOA, old business processes need not be maintained when they have outlived their usefulness. Implementing SOA can eliminate the need to change old systems or processes, while making the implementation of new systems and processes faster and cheaper. This is especially important during an acquisition, when systems and processes are scrutinized for overlap and compatibility between the two organizations.

In this way, SOA can be the best framework for renovating enterprise systems. By using SOA to decrease the time it takes to develop new systems or integrate existing systems, executives can focus on streamlining the communications between companies to ensure that critical information is being shared quickly and accurately among their communities of partners, suppliers, and customers.

Do's and Don'ts of Post-Acquisition SOA
Here are some do's and don'ts for putting SOA to work to optimize the acquisition integration outcome and keep the business focused on growth:

1. DO focus SOA projects on revenue acceleration
2. DON'T use SOA merely to integrate systems to reduce IT costs
3. DO interoperate and integrate internal processes through SOA
4. DON'T just focus inside the enterprise. Find a process that links to customers, distributors, partners, and suppliers.

Ultimately, companies can leverage SOA to take an incremental approach to M&A integration that puts energy and resources behind growth - not cost containment or back-end wiring - while laying a foundation that will let the enterprises adapt to ever-present M&A activity in the global economy. The key is to use SOA first to facilitate external processes that enable growth at acceptable margins.