Case Study: Post-M&A Global Website Migration: A Race Against Time

Prioritizing and Launching New Global Websites After an Acquisition in a Condensed Time Frame

Action

I immediately set up bi-weekly status calls with the global regions, took over the global agency and vendor relationships, and outsourced as many tasks as I could to internal 3M resources after creating a new project plan.

I helped Europe create a website design that was better targeted to SEO and CX/UX principals and set up an A/B test for the European website design against the original designs and information architecture (IA).

Results

Within the 9-month time frame, I was able to coordinate the launch of the 25 global domains in LATAM, EMEA, USAC, and APAC regions, vendor agreements were terminated, old websites were backed up to meet local record retention requirements, and we were able to launch the A/B test which set the standard for the global websites in that division.

Situation

Two years after acquiring a company for $2.5 Billion, none of the digital assets of the acquired company had been migrated into 3M.com, nor had any of the global vendor contracts been migrated. I was new to the role and I had 9 months to complete a global website migration of 17 websites before contractual deadlines hit, and Europe was rejecting the new website designs.

Tasks

• Migrate 25 global domains for 23 countries in 10 languages.

• Launch new websites and shut down old domains meeting country-specific record retention requirements.

• Manage global agency and vendor agreements and relationships.

• Set up global A/B test for best website design and IA.

• Create a post-launch global digital strategy for acquired portfolio.