Mergers and acquisitions present a well-documented host of challenges to CIOs. The task of merging different infrastructures, networks and applications is complicated by the task of uniting cultures, people and processes. Larry Herrmann, manager of Global IT Customer Support at DJO Global, a maker of orthopedic devices, has considerable experience addressing these challenges. When he took on his current role, DJO had just acquired six companies, and it was his job to manage IT support for facilities from Tunisia to Germany to North America, to name just a few. In an interview with FierceCIO, Herrmann discusses how to find a "quick win" by deploying a centralized support system and a single remote support technology.

FierceCIO: What is your role in helping integrate the companies DJO acquires?

Larry Herrmann: I came to DJO about four years ago, right about time ink was drying on the merger papers. My role was to manage global IT support. It was a new position. The existing DJO at the time was global in scope, but the merger brought in six new companies. These six companies operated pretty much independently of each other. They had their own ERP systems. There was very little communication between them. 

FCIO: Can you give an example of how IT support functioned at different sites prior to the merger?

Herrmann: In North America we have about 900 remote users. These are the sales reps who don't work from the main office. They're just out during the day selling. The primary method of support would have been over-nighting their laptops to their local help desk. That was a significant expense. It was a time constraint on the support staff. It put pressure on everyone. 

The help desks in each site were very different. In Austin, Texas, there were basically two [support staff employees], and people for the most part would knock on their door when they needed help. In Vista, Calif., it was a lot more formalized. There is an 800 number. Tickets would be recorded by phone or by email. There was a self-service portal put in place. In Minnesota, it kind of fell in between. They were staffed mainly by network engineers who would rotate around. Each day a different network engineer would answer the phone calls. Pre-merger European sites used the same ticketing system. There was one help desk technician in the United Kingdom who would sometimes travel around Europe. 

At the time of the merger we had all these different corporate cultures and different ways of delivering support as well as different systems.

FCIO: Were you able to increase the IT support staff to handle the integration challenges?

Herrmann: They don't solve a lot of problems here by just spending money. Headcount is always constrained. I couldn't just go out and hire 10 extra help desk technicians at each site to manage the new load. It made it more incumbent on me to justify purchases, justify ROI and provide a cost-benefit analysis. We really had to do the leg work and determine the best solutions for a constrained budget. It really forced me to be better at my job.

FCIO: Where did you begin the integration process? 

Herrmann: For a while the entities pretty much remained independent. The first thing that happened was that it was decided we needed to move to a unified ERP structure. That kind of led the rest of us in the IT world to figure out how to move forward. We started with the infrastructure. We started looking at integrating active directory, email and other bits and pieces. 

On the support side, we had completely separate help desks at different sites. The task was to figure out how to start talking to each other. How does a DJO user have the same experience wherever they are? It was really time to globalize the support offerings we had. One thing I've stressed to my team is that we really need to have no borders. Sure there are different time zones, but we shouldn't have to duplicate experts at every site. 

FCIO: Can you elaborate on the integration process on the support side?

Herrmann: We started by implementing a central help desk management system with separate onsite help desks. There was an in-place ticketing system [at the headquarters]. We knew fairly early on that we were going to stick with that.   

Within the ticket, if at all possible, we wanted a support agent to be able to fire up a remote control tool and do what needed to be done remotely. The session details would be captured on the ticket without a lot of manual work on the agent's part. We deployed a remote support solution from Bomgar, which rides parallel [to the ticketing solution]. When we brought on Bomgar and the remote control, the users just loved it. 

FCIO: What was the feedback from your IT professionals when you began trying to globalize support?

Herrmann: Part of the corporate culture is always push-back and resistance to change. The main resistance came from the fact that for years they were allowed to act independently. 

FCIO: How did you deal with the resistance?

Herrmann: Management did a lot of traveling that first year to pull us all together. I would bring in a couple people at a time from one site. I would take monthly trips to work with other teams. A lot of it was the old-fashioned face to face [communication], the art of persuasion. Everyone on the management team recognized that it was not going to just be about sending out memos.

Within about 12 months after the merger, the majority of calls were being recorded in the ticketing system.

FCIO: What causes the most help desk requests?

Herrmann: I think we follow along with most surveys--it's password and account problems. Month over month it's service requests for accounts and account modifications.

Last week our call volume in the Vista site jumped probably 300 percent because of the rollout to the new ERP system, but we expected about double that volume. Overall, the complexity of the calls has increased rather than the number of calls.    

FCIO: How has the remote control technology made your life easier?

Herrmann: For me as a manger, I now get to see global statistics without having to wait for six different systems to generate reports. With Bomgar and the remote control tool, when we have these complicated calls we have the ability to say, hold on, we're going to jump on your system and see what you're talking about. We can now do that globally. We've discovered databases out there that nobody knew about. All the little things that hide in the enterprise--it's much easier now to discover them and get to the root cause for resolution.

The remote control also really helped the team communication. The Bomgar solution has a chat feature built into it. People in different sites started talking to each other much more than when they had to pick up the phone. Agents can see that other people are online, and they can ping questions off of the other technicians.  

Dealing with mergers and acquisitions is an ongoing challenge. We just acquired another company about a month ago. I think part of the due diligence from IT really needs to be about where we can quickly globalize solutions that provide a fast benefit. Being able to come in and take the global view gave us a quick win and really set the standard for going forward. This acquisition is going to be much smoother because we have the tools in place and we can just look and see if we need new licenses. You can do some small things and have a big impact. 

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