Post-merger integration management where every colour and every saving rests on its own evidence
Every workstream report checked against its own evidence and every saving tied to its contract, in one live view of the integration.
See one case, screen by screen ↓Every Tuesday by 17:00 twelve workstream leads send a status report, and every one of them has a colour on the front. The IMO has Wednesday to turn those reports into one brief, because it goes out the evening before Thursday’s steering committee. There is no time to open each team’s cutover plan, mock results and consent tracker to see whether the colour holds — so the brief repeats what the leads said.
That is how an integration goes watermelon: green on the slide, red underneath. A mock cutover that missed its exit criterion becomes “minor data issues”. Two workstreams claim the same contract renegotiation, and the synergy number the board sees is counted twice. By the time anyone looks, the go-live is two weeks out and the termination window on a change-of-control clause has closed.
Estimated split of a typical week’s consolidation for twelve workstreams, by hand and with the solution.
Six specialist agents read the reports, check them against the evidence, keep the plan, risks and savings current and draft the brief; the integration lead decides each colour.
Northwind Bio closed on Calderra Biosciences on Sep 1. It is Wednesday of week 6, Day 37 of 100, and the steering committee meets Thursday at 08:00. Here is the IMO’s week, screen by screen, in the working solution.
Lena opens the command centre. Status on evidence is amber — 5 amber and 1 red on evidence, where the leads reported 3 amber — and 4 colours wait for her decision. Wave 1 go-live on Nov 2 is 26 days away at 80% readiness; the Year-1 synergy plan is $162.4M, with $18.4M confirmed.
“Read by agents Tue 17:06 · rules from playbook 4.3”
Eleven of twelve reports arrived by the Tuesday 17:00 deadline and every one has been read and cited. Each row shows what the lead says, what the evidence says, Wave 1 readiness and the next milestone. Communications arrived Wed 08:12, after the deadline, and shows as late until it is read.
Sam Patel’s IT deck says “ERP Wave 1 cutover remains on track for November 2.” The agents read it beside the cutover plan, the Mock cutover 2 results and the decision log: 3 of 8 critical-path tasks are late, with 4 working days of float to Nov 2. Playbook 4.3 makes that amber.
Evidence Checker proposes, never sets, a colour.
Lena clicks a citation and the mock cutover report opens at the passage: the customer master matched 91.4% of 13,980 ship-to records against an exit criterion of 99.5%. The deck calls these “minor data issues”. The CRM account load depends on the late task and must start by Oct 12.
“Read where it lives. The check cites it and never changes it.”
Three choices: use the evidence colour, keep the lead’s colour with a note for the steering committee, or ask Sam first with the findings attached. Lena takes amber and adds: “Mock 2 missed its exit criterion; go/no-go Oct 20 with Nov 30 fallback.” Choosing the evidence colour adds R-019 to the register — Wave 1 ERP cutover at risk, scored 4×5 = 20.
Procurement’s CRO preferred-provider panel (S-02, $14.5M) and R&D’s monitoring rate harmonisation (S-09, $6.2M) both draw on Brightline amendment 4: $34.2M of monitoring spend × 12% = $4.1M in both claims. The validator proposes booking it once, to S-02, because Procurement owns the contract.
“The same $4.1M is claimed twice” · confidence 0.96
Lena signs the booking with her password and the meaning of the signature: “I reviewed the cited evidence and propose this booking against the locked baseline.” Omar Haddad, the synergy controller, countersigns. S-02 is confirmed at $14.5M, S-09 is restated to $2.1M, and the Year-1 plan restates from $162.4M to $158.3M.
The brief is drafted from the decided colours, the register and the synergy ledger: headline, workstream colours, synergies, decisions needed, top risks and the next two weeks. Colours Lena has not decided yet go in marked “proposed — not yet decided”, with the lead’s colour beside them.
Lena reviews the draft and sends it to Rebecca Lang, the COO and sponsor. She approves with a note — “Agree. Put Ridgefield first on the agenda.” — and the brief is ready to send to the nine members of the steering committee for Thursday 08:00.
“Clean-team data from Project Lark is never used in this brief.”
70 of 72 reports read within an hour of arrival. 14 colour differences caught since close, 9 decided to the evidence. Confirmed run-rate against plan, colour on evidence by workstream and week, open risks, one-time costs — $142M spent of a $520M budget — and IMO hours down from 13.5 in week 1 to 2.1 in week 6.
The same week, seen by the four people who run it — what it looked like before, and what it looks like now.
Six specialist agents read the reports, check them against the evidence, keep the plan, risks and savings current and draft the brief; the integration lead decides each colour.
Reads every weekly status deck, document and project-tool export, and pulls the colour, accomplishments, issues, decisions required, help needed and next steps — each with its slide, page or row.
Ties each claimed saving to its baseline line, signed contract or decision, effective date and ledger, and flags claims without evidence or counted twice.
Recomputes the critical path, the float to each go-live and the dependencies between workstreams every time a plan changes.
Applies the playbook colour rules to each workstream’s own trackers, test results and deadlines, and proposes the colour the evidence supports.
Drafts and updates risks and issues from reports and trackers, scores likelihood and impact from 1 to 5 with reasons, and merges duplicates in the register.
Drafts the weekly steering brief — status, synergies, top risks and the decisions needed — in plain words on one page.
Decides each colour. The agents propose; a named person decides.
Anyone in the IMO can ask about a workstream, a risk, a saving or a milestone — or tell it to add a rule. Every answer shows the passage behind it.
Why is IT amber when the lead says green?
Sam Patel’s deck says green and “on track for November 2”. His own evidence disagrees: 3 of 8 critical-path tasks are late with 4 working days of float, and Mock cutover 2 matched 91.4% of customer records against an exit criterion of 99.5%. Playbook 4.3 makes that amber. The colour is yours to decide.
Is anything counted twice?
Yes — $4.1M. Procurement’s CRO panel (S-02, $14.5M) and R&D’s monitoring rates (S-09, $6.2M) both use the 12% cut in Brightline amendment 4. The playbook books it once, to the contract owner.
What must the steering committee decide this week?
Three decisions: the Ridgefield CMO consent — Ridgefield can terminate the Corventa supply agreement until Oct 31 and has not replied since Sep 4; the Wave 1 go/no-go gate — 99.5% match at Mock 3, with Nov 30 as the fallback; and the Brazil local entity, needed before the transfer can be filed.
Add a rule: flag a late critical-path task within 10 days of a go-live
Done. Any late critical-path task within 10 working days of a go-live now raises an amber flag, even if it is the only one. Running it on the 12 plans finds one more: the Memphis warehouse EDI link, late with the vendor. The rule is live in Settings and on the audit trail.
13 screens from the working solution, on its sample data. Pick one to see it large.
The weekly cycle, the colour rules, the synergy standard and who approves are settings — written down once, applied to every workstream the same way.
| Setting | Default | Choose from |
|---|---|---|
| Reports due | Tuesday 17:00 | Monday 17:00 · Tuesday 17:00 · Wednesday 12:00 |
| Steering committee | Thursday 08:00 | Thursday 08:00 · Friday 09:00 |
| Flag a late report after | 2 hours | Set in hours |
| Amber when critical-path tasks are late close to a go-live | Two or more late, float under 10 days | Set in days · on or off |
| Red when a legal or regulatory clock will be missed | On | Consent windows, filing deadlines, works council dates |
| Evidenced needs a signed contract and an effective date | On | Claims without them stay Actioned |
| Who approves the steering brief | Rebecca Lang | Rebecca Lang · Omar Haddad |
| Who can close a risk | Risk owner | Risk owner · IMO lead only |
Every figure is labelled: a target the solution is built to, an estimate, a typical published result, or a proven one.
“demo” = seen in the working solution, on its sample integration data · “target” = the design goal, measured in the live solution · “estimated” = our estimate (by-hand consolidation of 1.5–2 analyst days a week; source: integration-office weekly reporting practice, mergerintegration.com). People and companies named on this page are characters in the working solution.
Software the IMO uses to run a post-merger integration week by week: workstream status, Day-1 and go-live readiness, the risk and issue register, synergy tracking and the steering committee brief. The Integration Command Centre adds agents that read every workstream report, check it against the team’s own evidence and draft the brief with every number cited.
The Evidence Checker applies your playbook’s colour rules — late critical-path tasks close to a go-live, missed exit criteria, legal and regulatory clocks — to each workstream’s plans, test results and trackers. When its colour differs from the lead’s, it shows both with the cited findings. In the working solution it caught 4 of 11 week 6 reports.
Each claimed saving is tied to its baseline line, a signed contract or decision, an effective date and the ledger. The Synergy Evidence Validator flags claims without a contract, savings at risk from a slipping go-live, and two claims drawing on the same contract, so a saving is booked once. Finance countersigns before anything counts as confirmed.
Yes. The agents propose; the IMO lead decides every colour that goes into the brief, Finance countersigns every saving, the executive sponsor approves the brief before it is sent, and only a risk’s owner closes a risk. Every decision is recorded with the person’s name and time.
Yes. For a deal that is signed but not closed, pre-close data stays in the clean-team room, visible only to named members, with every view on the audit trail. No agent of the solution reads it, and it never reaches a brief. It is released to integration teams at closing.
The workstream folders where teams drop their status decks, your project tool for the plans of record, an ERP general-ledger extract, an HR system extract for headcount and retention, your contract system for signed contracts and consents, and your integration playbook and Day-1 checklist.
Yes. When reports are due, when the steering committee meets, when a report counts as late, the colour rules, the synergy evidence standard, who approves the brief, who countersigns savings and who closes risks are all settings. New rules can be added in plain words.
The Agentic Solution Engine builds and deploys it from your requirements — your integration playbook, Day-1 checklist, workstream structure and a sample of status reports — and it goes live once every quality gate has passed. We will walk you through it on a week of your own reports first.
Every sustainability questionnaire is answered from one evidence library, each answer cited, checked and approved by its owner.
1-min filmPolicy RadarEvery bill, rule and hearing that touches our medicines is read overnight and briefed, with sources, to the right policy lead.
1-min filmEarnings Q&AEvery likely analyst question forecast and answered from approved disclosures, each line cited.
1-min filmWe’ll run the Integration Command Centre on a week of your own workstream reports.