AWS Cloud Operations Blog

The Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence (M&A CCoE) – Part 2: Roles and Responsibilities

This blog post is part 2 of a series focused on the Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence (M&A CCoE). In part 1, we introduced the concept of the M&A CCoE. In this blog post, we discuss different roles and responsibilities associated with CCoEs. This post is written from the perspective of a buy-side entity, but the concepts, best practices, and considerations may apply to a wide variety of M&A or customer scenarios. While many organizations will have an existing M&A Integration Management Office (IMO), this post highlights the considerations for roles and responsibilities of a team in a cloud-specific arm of an IMO. We hope that this guidance will help organizations build the right teams to improve security and compliance, streamline their M&A journey, and maximize the value of their cloud investments during M&A transactions.

Introduction to CCOEs and a Rationale for M&A

In the first installment of this series, we introduced the concept of an M&A CCoE, a dedicated cross-functional & cross-organizational team that acts as a central cloud authority and cloud office during an M&A transaction. We also pointed out that M&A CCoEs help customer realize the full value of their cloud investments. Building on this foundation, below we suggest a framework for thinking about the roles and responsibilities of the M&A CCoE.

Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence Roles and Responsibilities

When constructing an M&A CCoE, it is important to consider how the specific M&A scenario will affect the roles and responsibilities of the team. While the specific construct of the M&A CCoE may differ depending on the type of transaction, for example, acquisition, merger, or divestiture, the general core components typically remain the same.

To enable the success of an M&A CCoE, we provide a table of common roles and responsibilities associated with M&A CCoE. Organizations can leverage this table to stand-up their own M&A CCoE or to evaluate an existing one. While each organization and M&A scenario is unique, this table represents AWS recommended best practices. Due to the dynamic nature of M&A, responsibilities may merge over time or a single stakeholder may take on multiple roles. That said, the table below can serve as a guide for organizations seeking to identify gaps, streamline their M&A process, and rapidly achieve technical and business outcomes during M&A transactions.

Example M&A CCoE Roles and Responsibilities


Example Role

Example Key Responsibilities

Time Commitment
Executive
Sponsor (CFO, CIO, CTO, EVP etc.)
  • Sets top-down business goals and advises the M&A CCoE Lead on the M&A CCoE’s charter/KPIs
  • Holds M&A CCoE accountable for task completion during M&A transaction
  • Gives permissions and sponsorship to M&A CCoE Team’s to dedicate time and resources to tasks at hand
  • Influences and motivates members of the M&A CCoE
  • Gives enforcement authority to M&A CCoE to hold applicable teams accountable for tasks during M&A transaction
  • A key stakeholder in the M&A transaction. Will likely be a senior executive leader that is involved in deal thesis and synergy strategizing.
5-8 hours per month

M&A CCoE Lead
  • Overall owner and leader of the M&A CCoE, defines M&A CCoE strategy and operating model
  • Leads the design, implementation, and coordination of M&A CCoE and M&A cloud tasks during transaction
  • Owns the creation and execution of post-close M&A Integration Plan, M&A Cloud Operating Model (COM), and M&A
  • Defines the quantitative and quantitative metrics to track success of M&A CCoE and M&A cloud activities
  • Works with executive sponsor on task progress
  • Coordinates with workstream and task owners, and establishes M&A integration roadmap
  • Generally viewed as organization’s subject matter expert or thought leader on M&A
Full Time

M&A CCoE Project Management Office (PMO)
  • Overall project management and task tracking function of M&A CCoE
  • Supports M&A CCoE lead in the design, implementation, and coordination of M&A CCoE and M&A cloud tasks during transaction
  • Tracks the success of the quantitative and quantitative metrics, consistently communicating with M&A CCoE on task completion risk and execution
  • Provides conflict resolution, blocker remediation, rule and standards enforcement, and forecasting functions to M&A CCoE
  • Aligns with M&A CCoE Stakeholders to document best practices, learnings, and considerations
  • Runs meetings and update project tracking system
  • Critical to tactical success of cloud influence on M&A transaction.
Full Time

M&A Cloud Enterprise Architect
  • Provide inputs to-be M&A cloud integration plan
  • Primary influencer for Integration Playbooks and Enterprise Architecture patterns
  • Primary cloud subject matter expert for entity
  • Identifies gaps and improvement opportunities of existing cloud M&A processes
  • Drives the success of technology integration, alongside the M&A CCoE Lead
Full Time
M&A Cloud Security Architect 
  • Acts as a voice of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), communicating the overall organization’s security and compliance requirements
  • Ensure security and compliance of tasks, architectures, and designs during M&A transaction lifecycle
  • Ensures regular testing and scanning of products, applications, and infrastructure to provide compliance with overall organization security standards
  • Develops and influences M&A Security Playbooks, M&A Integration Plan, and M&A CCoE Security Strategy
  • Works hand-in-hand with IT Integration Teams and M&A Cloud Enterprise Architect
  • Embed into M&A Task teams as a security, compliance, and risk management subject matter expert.
Full Time
Target IT Organization Lead (CIO, CTO, Tech VPs)
  • Provides context and information on target IT estate and organization
  • Identify gaps in integration strategy and operating model based on knowledge of target IT org’s unique culture or practices
  • Drives target IT organization’s human capital motivation and strategy throughout post-close phases
  • Most likely joins M&A CCoE as a result of post-close Day 0 activities
20 hours / week

Corporate Finance (VPs, Directors)
  • Sets integration, cloud, re-skilling, architecture, etc. budgets for M&A transaction
  • Works with M&A CCoE Lead to conduct cloud financial management and cloud cost forecasting
  • Informs M&A stakeholders on asset valuation process, and seeks support from M&A CCoE during due diligence process
10 Hours / week

Corporate Development (VPs, Directors)
  • Provide guidance and context to IT stakeholders on deal rationale (Voice of CFO/CEO)
  • Evaluate and ensure success of integration in accordance with synergies
  • Gather data, evidence, and insights for best practices for future transactions
10-15 Hours / week

Business Application Owners
  • Provide guidance and context of application stack to the integration plan
  • Influence product roadmap and value creation opportunities that arise as a result of M&A transaction
  • Evaluate application integration requirements and priorities
1-2 hours / week

IT Functions Leads (DevOps, Security, Ops, Network etc.)
  • Provides guidance and context of IT functions for the integration plan
  • Identify gaps within current and target IT estates for improvement before operationally efficient integration
  • Own, delegate, and manage M&A integration tasks based on M&A integration pattern
  • Understand expected technology and cloud synergies from the transaction, and work backwards with their teams to achieve synergies
8-10 hours / week for each IT functions (depending on integration plan)

HR
  • Align target IT organization to buy-side’s training initiative(s)
  • Onboard target IT organization’s people into existing entity’s culture, processes, programs, and teams
  • Track and report training and certification numbers
  • Develop re-skilling/up-skilling initiatives for both target and existing IT organizations
  • Work with target IT organization and finance on budget and development of the training plan
2-4 hours / week

Legal
  • Provide guidance for legal frameworks and geographic related regulations
  • Provide guidance for M&A specific legal and compliance considerations
  • Advise stakeholders on region/country-specific cloud acts and compliance agreements
  • Support M&A CCoE by assisting on development of security, risk management, and compliance objectives
1-2 hours per month

We’ve just discussed a number of different roles on this team. At times, it’s possible that stakeholders (especially from the acquired company) may lose sight of the benefits of the M&A transaction. Members from Corporate Development can solve for this by providing context of the transaction and expected business outcomes to the IT organization and other members of the M&A CCoE. The Corporate Development team can evaluate the success of the IT integration, ensuring that the stakeholder teams are working backwards from the expected synergies. Furthermore, the team can act as an outside voice in the room, adding a “business” and “finance” perspective to technical decision making.

Having representation from the target IT organization is also required for the success of an M&A CCoE. At a minimum, at “Day 0” after closure of the transaction, the M&A CCoE should have a leadership member of the target IT organization incorporated as a primary stakeholder of the M&A CCoE. This could be a CIO, CTO, CISO, or another executive leader with intimate knowledge of the target IT estate. The Target IT organization’s representative provides guidance on all aspects of the target IT estate, helps lead the integration of large/complex application and infrastructure stacks, and motivates the target IT organization’s people by influencing and communicating organizational goals and business outcomes. This stakeholder provides the necessary context around IT culture, people skill sets, standards and compliance, infrastructure philosophy, and other crucial pieces of information that can influence the integration strategy and plan.

As the M&A CCoE matures, it is important that the best practices, considerations, and learnings gathered from past M&A transactions are documented by the M&A CCoE. The M&A CCoE Project Management Office (PMO) is in charge of documenting and sharing this “tribal knowledge”, which allows an organization to incorporate lessons learned iteratively as it grows and conducts future transactions.

Conclusion

With the release of the Mergers & Acquisitions Cloud Center of Excellence, organizations can accelerate their M&A transactions’ expected business outcomes, reduce cloud risks and blockers to transaction success, and retain cloud M&A learnings and best practices for future M&A transactions. This post provides a high-level overview of the M&A CCoE and the necessary roles and persona responsibilities. Setting up teams and assigning them these responsibilities are important activities for organizations seeking to innovate while maximizing return on investment during M&A transactions. Please refer to the following links to learn more about how AWS supports digital innovation, cloud operations, cloud governance, and enterprise strategy.

About AWS Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory

The AWS Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory (AWS M&A Advise) Team is a group of subject matter experts at AWS that provide a suite of complimentary advisory engagements to AWS customers engaged in M&A transactions. If your organization is going through an M&A transaction and would like to learn more about how AWS can support you, please reach out to the AWS Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory Team through your organization’s aligned AWS Account Manager with this link.

Rohit Talluri

Rohit Talluri is a Generative AI GTM Specialist at Amazon Web Services (AWS). He is partnering with top generative AI model builders, strategic customers, key AI/ML partners, and AWS Service Teams to enable the next generation of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and accelerated computing on AWS. He was previously an Enterprise Solutions Architect and the Global Solutions Lead for AWS Mergers & Acquisitions Advisory. You can follow Rohit on LinkedIn.

Luke Kerrisk

Luke Kerrisk is currently a Senior Customer Solutions Manager on the Global Private Equity Business Development Team. He has worked at AWS since 2020. Luke’s focus areas are digital value creation, technology M&A, and private equity. As part of the AWS team, he supports private equity firms with technology due diligence, digital value creation, and cloud computing initiatives. You can follow Luke on LinkedIn.