In my last executive role I orchestrated the integration of LeasePlan and ALD Automotive, the number one and number two car leasing companies in Europe, with a combined 3.3 million vehicles under management.
I ran a structured Integration Management Office, steering a matrix of 17 functions and 21 countries. Every stream, vertical and horizontal, had its own Steering Committee, with one overarching Global Integration Board safeguarding alignment and governance.
The most complex workstream was IT. In each overlapping country we migrated one fleet onto a combined target platform so that we would operate as a single company. Anyone with integration or data migration experience knows this is no small feat. Both companies had long legacies and their own ways of working, so harmonising products, processes and systems — alongside merging legal entities and working with new management teams — was always going to be complex.
Five things I took away from it.
1. Build a culture that reconciles urgency and rigour
Our success depended in large part on our ability to collaborate and solve problems across borders, disciplines and cultures. Most importantly, we needed to reconcile the tension between urgency, mainly coming from the top, and the time needed by the people closest to the business to get the work done.
We managed that push and pull by pursuing a culture where problems could be raised openly without fear of retaliation; where problem-solving was fact-based and deductive rather than intuitive and on the fly; and where a decision, once taken, was not reopened without new facts.
We promoted this through in-person events, regular town halls and one-on-one check-ins, in which we discussed not only the hard content but also the softer side: mood, and where people had concerns.
Was that culture fully achieved? Of course not. But we pursued it relentlessly, because it was the only way to stay on course.
2. Rationalise the future way of working
An IT migration has far-reaching consequences for how employees work, for the services clients receive and for the business prospects of suppliers.
As a baseline, the future way of working was dictated by the chosen target system. Some features of the migrating company were carried across where they represented unique value worth preserving — steering drivers towards a preferred supplier network, for instance, or an open-book proposition contractually agreed with clients.
In many other cases the integration was an opportunity to shed low-value legacy practices. A large number of historical client exceptions had lost their relevance and could be eliminated. In some cases that meant renegotiating with clients, which, understandably, was not always received with enthusiasm by the sales teams.
3. Updating clients is harder than it sounds
An integration is disruptive for stakeholders: invoice layouts change, portals move, contact persons are replaced, payment details are updated. This requires upfront communication, delivered in waves, because the scope of change only becomes clear over time.
Our critical communication moments were:
- Announcement of the new brand (Ayvens), the new management team and the surviving legal entity, shortly after the official closing of the group merger
- Envisaged product and process changes, following the choice of the target system and the definition of the development scope (see lesson #2)
- Disclosure of new portals, apps, invoice layouts and payment details, following successful system development
- Confirmation of the migration date, following successful testing with migrating data onto the target system
- Go-live: IT migration and local legal merger
Providing these updates was not trivial, because the details kept changing as the migration date drew closer. Communicate too early and you may have to correct yourself later; communicate too late and clients have insufficient time to prepare.
We therefore treated essential disclosures as key programme deliverables, which helped maintain focus. Keeping a client's key account manager in place contributed greatly to preserving the relationship. And where a change had to happen, we tried to limit it to one change at most.
4. Deadlines are carved in stone — yet they will move when untenable
Our challenge was to deliver against internal deadlines so that we stayed credible with external stakeholders. Investors wanted to know when they would see their return. Clients wanted to know how their services would be affected. Suppliers wanted to know what it meant for their business. Therefore, providing a target migration date was a major commitment (see also lesson #1).
However - and maybe not surprisingly - we faced many moments where teams felt more time was needed. Requests for delay were therefore handled through a strict process: each had to include several scenarios — including holding the original date — and be substantiated with an in-depth impact analysis at the Global Integration Board, with approval validated by all senior stakeholders.
The hurdle was deliberately high, because management was expected to respect earlier commitments in the first place. Delays happened nonetheless, on several occasions. It is fair to say the later ones were reluctantly approved. But everyone understood that moving an untenable deadline was ultimately the right thing for the business.
5. Buckle up — we're migrating
Despite thorough preparation, there is no such thing as a smooth migration. The complexity is such that you must plan for incidents to occur.
That is why we set up a hypercare organisation: a project structure acting as an emergency control room for everything unexpected that needed fixing. And even after hypercare ended, employees, suppliers and clients needed time to get used to the new way of working. Productivity took a while to return to its original level so that the full effect of the synergies could be reaped.
A buddy system helped — pairing employees so that each pair held experience from both companies and both systems.
Finally, we tracked two key indicators on a regular basis: client net promoter score and realised synergies. Those two determined our success in the weeks, months and years that followed.
In closing
Integrating two companies was a complex and nerve-racking exercise, mainly because of the many detailed problems that kept surfacing over the course of the programme. With some patience however, the effort paid off.
Ayvens today benefits from the combined strengths of two former competitors, while also reinventing itself by casting off outdated ways of working. The company re-emerged stronger and leaner, on track to achieve full-year targeted annual synergies of €440m in 2026.
Working through an integration of your own?
I support integrations as interim manager, or with strategic guidance and practical advice.