M&A & integration
When two research desks merge: an integration playbook
Merged desks fail more often than merged balance sheets: competing morning loops, dueling vendors, duplicate entitlements, and two tribes of heroes who each believe their spreadsheet saved the firm. Integration is product management at high speed—pick winning routes with evidence, migrate data contracts early, retire tools publicly, and either run one loop or document intentional dual operation with CFO sign-off. Silence becomes shadow IT within weeks.
Day 0: stop the bleeding
Identity, SSO, and least-privilege entitlements before flavor debates. Incidents during merge dwarf pre-merge gripes.
Freeze net-new shadow tools for thirty days unless tied to regulatory deadline—with named exceptions, not vibes.
Loop choice
Pick host loop by measurable completion quality, not HQ zip code. Document dissent and migration timeline.
If leadership cannot pick, you still document interim dual-loop SLAs—ambiguous ownership is how email wins.
Vendor rationalization
Map overlapping feeds; negotiate temporary dual ingest with sunset; pay for overlap only if legally required.
Expose overlap cost in dollars weekly—finance attention shortens debates.
Historical data
Align corporate action policies before merging history—or explain divergences explicitly in client-facing narratives.
Merged NAV series without documented restatement windows will haunt client reporting for years.
Tool graveyard
List retiring UIs with dates; erect redirects and training; celebrate killed licenses in town hall.
Archive retired paths read-only with loud banners— ambiguity recreates duplicate work.
Culture
Pair every seat with a buddy from the other side for sixty days; measure joint tickets closed.
Run weekly ‘loop diff’ standups: what each side did differently and which wins—no philosophy, only decisions.
Compliance
Revisit MNPI walls, recording rules, and client list segmentation—merge changes factual boundaries.
Expect temporary elevated false positives in surveillance; tune after stabilization, not day one panic disables.
Finance and procurement
Reconcile invoices for duplicate feeds by sunset week—carrying overlap silently erodes credibility with sponsors.
Day 120 scorecard
Single loop adherence rate, duplicate tool traffic near zero, vendor invoices reconciled, joint IC cycle time down.
If metrics are flat, declare either integration failure or honest dual-shop mode—middle ground is shadow IT.
Public desk routes referenced above
Same URL discipline applies after you authenticate—bookmarkable paths, no tenant data on these pages.
- Operating rhythm Template language for stages, owners, and completion rules in a mandatory morning loop.
- Product atlas Route-level map so reviewers can open the exact module that produced a figure.
- Platform framing How tenancy and public chrome split when SEO and auth walls must coexist.
- Guides Pair public guides with internal SOPs so training points at one narrative spine.
- Guided product tour Orient sponsors and new analysts on module boundaries before you encode them in a mandatory loop.
- Service status Public narrative around uptime; align its claims with what engineering will defend in postmortems.
- Terms of use Stable legal URL when client-facing calculator links depart the marketing host.
- Privacy policy Maps subprocessors and flows; keep language consistent with how you split marketing and tenancy.
Operator toolkits
Checklists and scripts you can lift into runbooks, vendor RFPs, or board appendices.
Integration patterns only; every deal has unique regulatory and contractual constraints.