Eurofins Scientific · Life Sciences, Testing, Inspection and Certification
ERP integration of 20 acquired laboratories, project duration cut from nine to two months
Head of Finance IT Germany, responsible for the integration projects
- 20
- acquired laboratories integrated
- −78%
- integration duration, from nine months to two
- Starting point
- Eurofins was growing through acquisitions across Europe faster than the organization could absorb the new companies. Each laboratory came with its own ERP, its own chart of accounts, its own finance processes, and its own data structures. An integration took nine months on average. The backlog was growing, and that pace was not going to scale.
- Approach
- I built an integration playbook covering all workstreams: assessment of the target company’s systems, data migration from the legacy system into Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, finance process harmonization, interfaces, and go-live stabilization. Each phase had defined inputs, outputs, and timelines. The approach was refined with every integration, so each successive one ran faster and more predictably.
- Result
- Average integration duration fell from nine months to two. The team delivered the integrations without additional headcount, while the number of concurrent acquisitions continued to grow.
“He turned an underperforming team into a best-in-class delivery team. That is what a leader does.”
Javier Ramirez, Director of Information Technology
What I take away from it
With many acquisitions in quick succession, methodology is the only thing that scales. Good project management on an individual project is not enough when several integrations are running at the same time. Every workstream needs to run on the same track: defined entry criteria, milestones, and exit criteria.
Building that track is harder than running any single integration. But once it exists, an organization can integrate at a pace that would otherwise be structurally impossible. This is the approach I bring to every integration after an acquisition today, whether it is one or twenty.