The Back-Office Surprises Nobody Warned You About When Going Global

Jennifer Lipschultz, Sr. Director Merger & Acquisition Integration and Corporate Project Management

Due diligence said the target's employees were fluent in English. Six months after close, Jennifer Lipschultz was approving funding for business English classes.

Lipschultz, Senior Director of M&A Integration and Corporate Project Management at ECI Software Solutions, has run integration on 20-plus acquisitions across the Netherlands, Germany, India, and Sweden. She covers the back-office surprises standard diligence misses: English proficiency that doesn't carry over between acquisitions in the same country, a German go-live that required translating the website, support portal, and billing systems on the same day, and works council negotiations to harmonize benefits across entities. Every surprise means coordinating payroll, HR, IT, and legal on one timeline, deal after deal.

Lipschultz's point about herding payroll, HR, IT, and legal onto one timeline for every cross-border deal is the problem DealRoom Integration was built for: diligence findings and task owners carry straight into the integration plan, with dependencies that adjust automatically so one missed handoff doesn't blow the go-live date. DealRoom customers see a 50% reduction in people-hours per deal. See how it works: click here.