Synergy Obsession vs. Orchestration Reality: Why M&A Automation Engines Often Fail

Boards love synergy estimates—“£2 million in IT cost savings.” But without a realistic orchestration roadmap, those numbers evaporate as integration projects stall in complexity and change resistance.

The Disconnect

• Wishful Integration: Overestimating API availability and underestimating legacy approvals.

• Workflow Bloat: Over‑engineered automation pipelines that nobody adopts.

• Change Management Vacuum: No training, no ownership and no governance leads to abandoned scripts.

Lessons in Synergy Overreach

A LinkedIn analysis of M&A synergies highlights that 70–90% of deals fall short, often because integration costs—IT alignment, employee retraining, regulatory fees—were never baked into the model.

A Pragmatic Orchestration Roadmap

1. Phase 1—Lightweight Orchestration Layer e.g. n8n: Deploy a streamlined automation engine to support 2–3 minimum‑viable processes (e.g., incident remediation, user provisioning).

2. Phase 2—Proof of ROI: Demonstrate real savings in weeks, not quarters, then expand to additional workflows.

3. Phase 3—Governance & Adoption: Embed version control, stakeholder champions and training to avoid orphaned automations.

If you’re chasing synergies but can’t break through orchestration gridlock, let’s talk. A 90‑Day Impact CTO engagement builds a lean automation engine that delivers real savings—and real adoption—from Day 30 onward. Find out more at www.theimpactcto.com