Banking IT Mergers of Equals

According to the statistics, mergers in general have §had a proven history of failures. Furthermore, as §supported by the literature, the major reasons of §failure are IT integration, cultural integration, §governance, and business process. There §is no structured process or methodology present for §managing mergers of equals from an IT perspective. §The reason for the absence of such a structured §systematic approach is that few companies go through §the process often enough to develop a pattern and §hence a systematic approach. This research is trying §to reduce the failure rate by managing the IT §variable as one of many variables in the merger §equation, by developing a systematic approach that §could be followed to reduce the failure rate. The §systematic approach is focused on the banking §industry, and mainly on mergers of equals among §other mergers, due to the large number and high §complexity of mergers within this focus area. The §systematic approach was developed based on the §background and focal literature, subject matter §experts in the field, and the researcher's own §insight being a process methodologist of IT in the §financial industry.