Unifying Incident Management After a Merger

Case Study

Client Context

A mid-sized European SaaS company (<200 employees) expanding into new markets through the acquisition of two smaller startups with proven products and strong market traction. While product integration was underway, each team continued to operate independently, maintaining separate engineering and operational practices. Incident management was among the areas left unstandardized.

Challenge

During the intensive integration phase, several major production incidents occurred, affecting customers and exposing operational gaps.

Lack of clear ownership, inconsistent definitions of "incident", and fragmented communication caused prolonged outages and uncertainty.

Some incidents lasted several days, resulting in financial losses and reputational risk.

Diagnosis

Through interviews, post-mortem reviews, and process analysis, we identified that:

• Teams used different severity levels, escalation paths, and tools (Slack, Teams, Jira).
• No dedicated Incident Manager role existed.
• Data and documentation varied in quality and format.
• Leadership lacked visibility into MTTR, trends, or root causes.

This inconsistency hindered collaboration, learning, and accountability across teams - while making compliance and auditing (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC2) more difficult.

Approach & Actions

1. Defined a unified Incident Management framework - including severity classification, roles, responsibilities, and escalation rules.
2. Established shared tools and documentation standards to ensure a single source of truth and consistent reporting.
3. Facilitated workshops for engineering teams and managers to practice effective triage and communication during incidents.
4. Introduced operational metrics and dashboards providing visibility into incident frequency, resolution time, and systemic improvements.

Results

• Faster response and resolution times.
• Consistent incident reporting and visibility across teams.
• Improved collaboration and ownership culture.
• Enhanced audit readiness and compliance posture.
• Better management insight into operational reliability.

Key Takeaway

After mergers or acquisitions, aligning technical processes like Incident Management is critical for operational resilience.

A unified process not only reduces downtime but also strengthens the company's ability to scale and maintain customer trust.