What’s the hardest part of managing a merger, acquisition, or divestiture? The answer may seem to be getting lawyers and regulators to sign off on the deal or handling the business restructuring that follows.
But here’s another hairy M&A and divestiture challenge which executives too often underestimate: migrating massive amounts data, most of it unstructured, between entities. When you create a new company through a merger, acquire an existing company or spin off a new business out of an older one, you typically need to move and restructure a number of data assets—ranging from business records, to documentation databases, software source code, and beyond.
