According to the statistics, mergers in general have had a proven history of failures. Furthermore, as supported by the literature, the major reasons of failure are IT integration, cultural integration, governance, and business process. There is no structured process or methodology present for managing mergers of equals from an IT perspective. The reason for the absence of such a structured systematic approach is that few companies go through the process often enough to develop a pattern and hence a systematic approach. This research is trying to reduce the failure rate by managing the IT variable as one of many variables in the merger equation, by developing a systematic approach that could be followed to reduce the failure rate. The systematic approach is focused on the banking industry, and mainly on mergers of equals among other mergers, due to the large number and high complexity of mergers within this focus area. The systematic approach was developed based on the background and focal literature, subject matter experts in the field, and the researcher's own insight being a process methodologist of IT in the financial industry.
