INSIGHT 2|2019

20 | Prysmian Group I N S I G H T FOCUS ON On 11 June 2018, just five days after the announcement of the completion of the General Cable acquisition, employees around the world opened up the company intranet and saw a common landing page. In many acquisitions, management and bankers focus on getting the deal done … and then turn to integrating IT systems as an afterthought. With Prysmian and General Cable, the IT department was brought in during the acquisition process alongside the business consultants combing through General Cables’ accounts. While consultants crunched the numbers, the IT department began mapping the maturity of the two future partners’ respective computer systems. “Prysmian’s top management is very committed to the IT integration process, and has increased budget for it, because it has seen the benefits from past experience,” says Marcelo Petenao, Prysmian Group Head of IT Integration. Thanks to Prysmian’s experience from acquiring Draka in 2011, the Group has been able to meet the challenge of IT integration with a full awareness of the strategic role IT plays in harmonising the data processing functions of two companies. With Draka, this process took five-to-six years. With General Cable, Petenao and his team plan to cut that time to just three. The strategic benefits of IT integration are twofold. The first is cost reduction thanks to synergies. The second is less tangible but no The strategic benefits of quick IT integration P rysmian Group tackles IT integration with General Cable to share best practices and deliver synergies IT systems are a sort of meta language, when you harmonize them, you force the organization to speak the same language. Marcelo Petenao, Head of IT Integration at Prysmian Group Stefano Brandinali , Chief Digital Officer at Prysmian Group