Cisco reveals its acquisition integration strategy in a detailed case study

There's a lot more to acquisitions than just a handshake. Cisco, which last year acquired 11 companies (this year it has only managed five so far) is offering up its lesson learned from its 120-plus purchases since 1993 in a case study on its site. Although the document was originally released in October 2007, Cisco says it has remained one of its top 10 most downloaded case studies. It offers a detailed look at the company's acquisition integration strategy whose success is measured by whether Cisco retains all of the employees who transferred from the acquired company, whether the acquired company's products and service revenue has been sustained, and the launch of new Cisco products based on the acquired products and technologies.

Cisco's acquisition integration strategy covers three phases: discovery and planning, which includes scope assessment, business modeling and detailed due diligence; execution, which includes "ensuring operational readiness" and "activation of employees, resources and integration tasks"; and monitoring, which includes ongoing measurements and adjustments of the integration activity.

The company's methodology can be used time and again through all its acquisitions. This includes centralizing management through a designated team in the Cisco Business Development group; cross-functional teams for each acquisition plan, manage, and monitor integration activities across the company; and the use of standard principles, metrics and tools.

Read the full document here.

By Cisco's own measurements as outlined above, how successful do you believe Cisco's acquisition strategy to be?

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