Mergers and acquisitions can create a whole host of complications for IT, not the least of which is combining the physical assets of two formerly separate companies into a single enterprise. Any system administrator who has suffered through the pre- and post-acquisition period can tell stories of the migraine-making challenge of trying to get a complete picture of combined resources of the two merging businesses. Conceptually, asset management systems should ease this process but combining the data from separate asset management apps they can actually add an extra layer of complexity.

Naturally, just because the task is difficult doesn't mean it is impossible. Nor, especially in this age of tying together the role of IT resources in business processes, can organizations afford to not pull together the data from these systems. So to minimize some of those integration issues, IT and business managers alike need to develop a workable project plan to combining the asset information in disparate management systems or project management applications.

While coming up with a pragmatic strategy to combining resource information won't eliminate some of tedious tasks associated with combining the asset data, it will at least put the project on track and help assure the necessary staff resources are dedicated to the task. Ultimately, the effective merger of all of the enterprise's resources will go a long way toward keeping business projects on schedule and guaranteeing the company gets the most out of its assets.