In February 2006, French firm Ipsos acquired Mori, the largest independently-owned provider of market research in the UK, for £88m.

Following two management buy-outs, Mori wanted a partner to expand the scope of the firm. ‘Ipsos already had a UK presence, but the areas of expertise and client base didn’t overlap greatly, making an excellent market fit,’ says Scott Phillips, head of infrastructure at Ipsos Mori.

‘Mori was also a very well-established brand, which would raise public awareness of Ipsos significantly.’

Phillips says the infrastructure teams operated very differently. Mori had decided to push for specialisms in teams. Ipsos UK had specialists, but they also worked on other systems requiring a variety of skills.

‘This is a benefit at times,’ says Phillips. ‘But when your UK operation doubles overnight, you need individuals to be highly skilled in specific areas to provide the depth of support and development you require. As we are now a global group, we support each other on a regional basis so the need for top skills is paramount.’

Culturally there were also some major differences. ‘An example of this is dress code,’ says Phillips. ‘Mori subscribed to the suited and booted school of IT attire whereas Ipsos were very flexible in their policy allowing casual wear as normal attire. Some cultural differences take longer to level out than others and this is one we probably need to work on.’

IT was the first department to be merged, allowing IT staff to focus on key elements of the merger. Almost from the day the merger was announced the respective heads of IT worked together to plan the systems integration. The firms decided not to call on outside help, and instead relied on the existing skills in Ipsos worldwide. ‘The ability to draw on a global team is very reassuring,’ says Phillips.

Several areas were launched in parallel: network integration, authentication and email integration. ‘We very quickly created a virtual private network link between Ipsos and Mori,’ says Phillips. ‘This enabled the IT teams to work very closely together.’

The systems integration, which is still underway, has suffered a few setbacks, although no show-stoppers. For example, the network integration was a major challenge due to IP overlap with Ipsos, resulting in a complete IP address renumbering programme in Mori. But Phillips is confident things are going to plan. He says the three key ingredients to a successful merger are planning, testing and communication.