Bob Klimm at Strategic Edge, LLC

Note that I said the development of the roadmap provides this linkage between strategy and product development.  This is because the Product Roadmap (the end result of the road mapping process) is nothing more than a graphical tool to visualize a time phased sequence of projects that represent marketing’s best guess on what is needed to expand market share and profitability.  Although the roadmap is rather simple, the roadmap development process involves a significant amount of analysis and decision making.

There is often no formal integration process – this is typical of less sophisticated acquirers and acquisitions which claim no anticipated changes in a “merger of equals”.  Unfortunately, this initial independence is short lived as various corporate functions start expecting information in the format used by the acquiring company.  Next, these same well intentioned staffers expect compliance with corporate policies and procedures.  This will likely impact budget and hiring approvals and may extend to more critical business processes like customer terms or credit approval.  While all these changes seem reasonable to the various staff groups - the cumulative effect on the acquired company is at least a diversion of resources to deal with non-value added administrative tasks and at worst a direct violation of their expectations and trust.  The most destructive changes occur when organizational decisions and HR policies combine to impact reporting relationships, titles and compensation.   Coupled with the more benign administrative issues and an information vacuum – the intended synergies of the acquisition are quickly forgotten – replaced by uncertainty about levels of authority, long term job security and outright mistrust.