When companies talk about mergers (or acquisitions), the conversation usually centres on finances: purchase price, debt, synergies, and revenue forecasts. But increasingly, that lens is too narrow. Because there’s another asset that’s just as strategic, and just as risky if mishandled: customer data. And the person who guards those keys is the CIO.
Here’s why thinking beyond the books, and engaging the CIO early is essential, along with lessons and best practices.
Why Customer Data is More Than Just a Line on the Balance Sheet
Customers Are the Reason for the Business
The financials tell you what’s happened; customer data tells you why it happened and where value lies (loyalty, churn, behaviour). Without knowing what your customers do, you can’t plan what they’ll do post-merger.
Risk and Compliance
Data protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA, India’s laws, etc.) impose strict obligations. Mishandling data or ignoring privacy obligations can lead to fines, reputational damage, and those risks often arise from tech stack incompatibilities or poor integration.
Competitive Differentiation
How companies use data (analytics, personalisation, experience) can become a competitive edge. If a merged entity can’t leverage combined customer intelligence, you lose an opportunity.
Operational Continuity & Trust
Customers expect services to carry on without major disruption. If integrations break something (like data access, customer portals, billing), trust erodes faster than financial recoveries.
What Happens When the CIO is Missing in Action
To illustrate, here are scenarios (drawn from real or prototypical cases) of what can go wrong:
Data Breach Risks: Company A acquires Company B without knowing that B stores customer data in older systems with weak security controls. After the deal, attackers find a vulnerability and extract customer data, leading to regulatory fines & PR fallout.
Customer Experience Disruption: Suppose two customer support systems don’t integrate well. Customers may suddenly find their order histories missing, or loyalty points not showing up, small things, but damaging to trust.
Wasted Spend: If both companies have invested heavily in similar analytics tools, but the integration was never considered, you may end up paying for both or trying to migrate one set of data into another inefficiently, costing in terms of time, effort, and money.
Slowed Realisation of Synergies: The promised cross-selling, or using data to “unlock” insights, may not happen because data is siloed, messy, and unstandardized—synergies come late or never.
Final Word: M&A Isn’t Just About the Money
Mergers and acquisitions are often framed as financial transactions. That’s logical; after all, money talks in boardrooms. But companies that see through just the spreadsheets are prone to underestimating what customer data holds, both as risk and opportunity.
The CIO is no longer just someone who keeps servers running; they’re a steward of data, a guardian of customer trust, and a transformer of possibility. If the keys to customer data are ignored, you don’t just leave value on the table; you may compromise the deal itself.
