[Judith Ghitea]

My organization’s M&A Integration team is fairly small with me essentially program managing a few full-time members from legal, operations and finance with part-time assistance from HR, marketing, services, client experience, etc. We are actively exploring team expansion to keep up with the tempo of transactions and growing deal complexity. What permanent roles or positions do you feel are vital to ensure integration success and why?

[Miguel Coelho]

Hi Judith.

Thanks for your post.

It really depends on the deal volume you are facing , size and complexity.

However, considering that the team is getting involved from DD, I think you could consider something as:

– IMO Director – the person that leads the full Integration team across deals
– IMO Leads – FTEs that are fully dedicated to one or more deals at time, coordinating the different workstream, from integration blueprint to Day 1 Planning and Execution to Day 100 to transition to BAU
– IMO Finance Lead – FTE to be fully dedicated to the Finance integration working side by side with the Finance WS Lead – Finance, independently of deal type almost always require full integration
– IMO Comms and Change Management – dedicated to E2E comms and change management, cutting through different WS and working side by side with WS Leads to ensure standardised comms approach and consistent messages
– IMO Synergy Lead – person dedicated to the synergy case, reviewing the deal synergies, validating, adjusting, identifying more synergies and working with IMO leads to translate synergies into actionable plans and have tracking in place

For more roles (even Finance and Comms) you could look to equip people from the functions to be ready to execute integrations and be dedicated to that while sitting outside of your IMO (it’s an alternative).

[Daniel]

It is an interesting question and one that we have grappled with as our M&A activity isn’t consistent and can span geographies.
The approach we have therefore taken is to maintain a small core team whose job is to make the functions responsible for the integration of their respective areas and the core team is the glue that provides the best practice, the framework, the continuity.

We therefore have a core team consisting of the following roles and drive the business to assign workstream leads per integration to cover their areas.
– Head of M&A Integration overseeing the Playbook and the Programme Managers
– Integration Programme Managers (usually 1 covering each region)
– Integration PM (usually 1 per integration)
– Business Change Manager
– PMO

Part of the reason for this is that we find resistance when we centralise too much and prefer to make the functions more responsible.

[Kristi Sun]

Yes, it really depends on the size of the deals, how frequent they occur (1 a year/multiple a year), on-site support (if the acquiring organization is global) and complexity. Again, if the org is global, boots on the ground are a necessity. Bringing in outside parties in those jurisdictions is sometimes required, especially in the finance realm with all the different criteria for local and IFRS books.
For the organization I work in, we currently do not have a dedicated team of resources, which we need/are trying to establish. Each integration/acquisition has a group chosen at the facility/plant level, and we are building a team out of the Corporate Office that has been newly established to work in conjunction with the plant team.

Current Structure is as follows:
Plant Team: Project Champion/Sponsor, Operations, Materials, Finance, HR, Sales, Quality (these are the Leads for each function, aka Matched Pairs with the new Org).
Corporate Team: Corporate Controller, Technical Accounting Specialist, Tax/Treasury, Consolidations, M&A Integration – Finance, Legal, Corp Development

The biggest challenge for us is also what Daniel noted, since M&A activity isn’t consistent and can span across the world, there is always a bit of pushback in standardizing a team. The organization is afraid that team won’t be busy full time (though that never seems to be the case). I believe since we do not always have a core team set, we have problems in communication, details, and large transactional issues can occur.

[Mutahira Khan]

Hi Judith – great question, and I really like the perspectives shared here.
Building on Miguel, Daniel, and Kristi’s points, I’ve found that the most effective model is a small, high-impact core IMO team complemented by strong functional ownership. In terms of must-have permanent roles, here are some selective roles that we have:
Integration Program Lead(s): Critical for end-to-end accountability—from diligence through Day 1 to stabilization. They act as the “single throat to choke” across workstreams.
PMO / Governance Lead: Ensures structure, cadence, risk tracking, and consistency across deals—especially important as complexity and volume increase.
Finance / Synergy Lead: Beyond just finance integration, having someone focused on synergy validation, tracking, and realization is key to actually delivering deal value.
Change Management & Communications Lead: Often underestimated, but essential for aligning stakeholders, reducing resistance, and maintaining clear, consistent messaging across functions.
What I’ve seen (and aligns with the course material) is that gaps in communication and change management are often the biggest drivers of integration challenges—not technical execution.
Given your current lean structure, even adding 1–2 of these roles (especially PMO + Comms/Change) can significantly improve the integration office and outcomes, while still leveraging functional teams for execution.
Curious to know if you are seeing more challenges on the execution side or stakeholder alignment side today?

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