A deal has dozens of moving parts and dates that can’t move. For carve-outs, ERP integrations, add-ons and other transactions, our M&A program management team runs every workstream, keeping finance, HR, legal, IT, operations and the seller on one plan, from signing through Day 1, the TSA exit and the first 100 days.
Signing through the TSA exit and Day 100
Finance, HR, legal, IT, operations, the seller and your advisors
One milestone plan, a weekly cadence and a live view of risk and cost
Carve-outs, ERP integrations, add-ons, mergers and other transactions
Diligence
Day 1
TSA exit
Integration
M&A program management is how a deal gets delivered once it’s signed, whether it’s a private equity platform deal, a carve-out, an ERP integration or an add-on. A program management office (PMO) sets the plan, owns the deadlines and makes sure every team, inside the company and outside it, knows what it has to deliver and by when. Where M&A project management runs a single workstream, program management ties all of them to the dates that matter: close, Legal Day 1, the TSA exit and Day 100.
Deals rarely slip because of the strategy. They slip on coordination: a dependency nobody owned, a decision that sat for three weeks, a cost nobody was tracking. A PMO catches those early, while there’s still time to act.
Are we on track for close and Day 1, and what could stop us?
Which decisions are waiting on us, and who owns them?
What does my team need to deliver, and who are we waiting on?
Which services are still running under the TSA, and when do they end?
What has the deal cost so far, against the budget and the synergy case?
Is the value in the deal model actually showing up?
Four parts of one office, run together, so a slipped date in one workstream shows up in the plan, the risk log and the budget in the same week.
Program charter and scope
Steering committee and decision rights
A named owner for every workstream
Escalation paths
Reporting to the deal team and board
Who decides, and how fast?
Does every task have an owner?
Integrated milestone plan
Legal Day 1 and Day 1 readiness
Dependencies between workstreams
The 100-day plan
TSA exit timeline
Are the dates realistic?
What depends on what?
Risk, issue and dependency log
Weekly risk reviews
Decision log
Change control
Go/no-go checkpoints
What could derail Day 1?
Is anything stuck?
One-time deal cost tracker
TSA fee tracking
Synergies against the deal model
Budget versus actuals
Value-creation reporting
Is the deal on budget?
Are the synergies landing?
We run the IT workstream ourselves. For the rest, the PMO coordinates your functional leads and outside advisors, and can fill a vacant role with an interim lead.
The same office and the same cadence on every deal. What changes is how many workstreams it runs and how long it stays.
To close
Day 1 requirements for every function
Readiness checklist and go/no-go
Day 1 command center
To Day 100
IT, ERP and other workstreams run inside your existing PMO
Cutover, TSA and cost reporting
One plan tied to the deal’s dates
Day 100+
Integration office in place before close
100-day plan and synergy tracking
Every function on one weekly cadence
To TSA exit
Every separation workstream, not only IT
Separation cost and TSA fee tracking
Standalone readiness through the TSA exit
The same sequence on every deal, refined across carve-outs, mergers and add-on integrations, and scaled to the size of the deal.
Charter, governance, workstream owners and one milestone plan anchored to close.
A weekly cadence across every workstream, with risks, decisions and cost in one view.
Day 1 command center, TSA exit and synergies, then a clean handover to the operating team.
Three deals where one office kept every workstream moving, and what a client said about working with us.
We unified 43 systems into one operating platform for a PE-backed automotive aftermarket rollup, cutting $1.6M in annual costs.
Read the case study →
We ran the carve-out diligence, then led every separation workstream. The division moved onto its own Azure and Microsoft 365 environment, with NetSuite implemented in five weeks.
Read the case study →
A carve-out with two roll-up acquisitions to integrate at the same time. We moved 500+ servers onto AWS and ran the internal and HITRUST audits as fractional CISO, and the business was off the TSA in four months.
Read the case study →A strategic, roll-up-their-sleeves attitude that drives bottom-line IT and operational savings. Compello identified our gaps, recommended practical solutions, and ensured all parties executed.
VP Global Supply Chain, $150M food manufacturerSomething we haven’t covered? A partner can answer it on a short call.
M&A program management is the work of delivering a deal after it’s signed: one plan, one set of deadlines and one office accountable for every workstream. It covers governance and decision rights, the integrated milestone plan, risks and issues, and what the deal is costing against the budget.
It’s the layer that connects the individual projects, like the IT cutover, the payroll move or the new bank accounts, to the dates the deal depends on. See how it fits with the rest of our M&A IT services.
M&A project management runs one piece of the deal, such as the ERP migration or the Day 1 email cutover, with its own plan and team. Program management sits above the projects. It sets the overall timeline, manages the dependencies between them and decides what happens when one slips.
Most deals need both. We run the program office and the IT projects, and coordinate the project leads in finance, HR, legal and operations.
On our engagements, a senior Compello lead runs the program day to day. They own the milestone plan, chair the weekly program meeting, keep the risk and decision logs current, and report to the steering committee and your deal team.
They’re operators, not coordinators: people who have run carve-outs, integrations and IT organizations themselves, so they can see a problem coming in a workstream before it shows up in a status report.
For an add-on or a merger, the program office becomes an integration management office (IMO). It’s set up between signing and close, defines what has to work on Day 1, then runs the 100-day plan and tracks the synergies that follow.
IT is usually the largest workstream, which is why we run it ourselves as part of our M&A IT integration work.
At signing, or earlier if you can. The weeks between signing and close are when Day 1 gets decided, and a program office set up after close spends its first month catching up.
The best starting input is diligence. What IT due diligence finds about the target’s systems, contracts and costs becomes the first draft of the plan.
Yes. A deal touches finance, HR, legal, tax and facilities as well as IT, and all of them have to be ready on the same date. We run the program office across every one of them. On a separation, that includes the IT carve-out itself and the TSA exit.
If you already have a PMO in place, we can run one or several workstreams inside it instead, reporting into your cadence.
What the target’s IT will really cost to run, fix, separate or integrate, before you sign.
Security posture, compliance gaps and cyber-insurance exposure, priced before you sign.
Whether the ERP can carry the investment thesis, before signing or after close.
Separation design, TSA scope and governance, Day 1 cutover and an early exit from the TSA.
Day 1 readiness, then moving the add-on onto the platform’s systems.
AI readiness, maturity, governance and training, tied to EBITDA.
Start with a short scoping call: the deal, the dates and the workstreams, and how the program should run from signing to Day 100.
