HOW SOFTWARE COMPANIES CAN OPTIMISE A TELECOMS ACQUISITION

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K N OW Y O U R F U T U R E D O C U M E N TAT I O N A N D R E P O R T I N G

Software companies may be surprised by telecoms’ reporting requirements, which will likely also apply to them post-acquisition.

Many companies, including telecoms, are busy integrating work-from-home options, which may lead to new documentation and reporting requirements. While this is for most places a work in progress, inquiring about such structures and elements during negotiations may save both leadership and employees from being surprise post-acquisition. For founders, this may need to be a focal point during an acquisition process. Documentation requirements must be clarified, specifying how documentation is to be completed and by whom, who is responsible for oversight and compliance, and how often reviews will take place. It may also be a good idea for the software company to investigate whether increased documentation requirements necessitate additional administrative staff after the acquisition.

Compared to life before an acquisition, software company decision-makers will likely be spending a lot more time post-acquisition documenting and seeking approval fromother departments than they did before. It is not necessarily something unique to telecoms but a feature of most large organisations. The same goes for other formal requirements of a large telecoms that may come as surprises. There may be an increase in meetings, as well as compliance requirements that extend far beyond decision-makers. Programmers, for example, will, often, also be required to produce increased amounts of documentation covering ongoing assignment and tasks on specific products and solutions. The same may apply to other staff groups. For software companies, this can be a bit of an eye- opener and something they should prepare for ahead of the integration process—a process that involves a lot of documentation work.

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