100 days of Ignite as part of Verisk

Dear Diary,

It’s been 100 days since Verisk’s Sequel acquired Ignite. There is a whole backstory to that which has already been written about here.  But what has actually happened in our first hundred days?

Whilst it might be my first time, our acquirer is an old hand at such things. Verisk acquire approximately 1 billion companies per year and therefore have an entire team dedicated to integrating those companies into the Verisk “family”. There are work streams for HR, finance, accounting, security, data, infrastructure, networks, training… About 12 in total.

Naturally, I have delegated furiously and my excellent team has taken the majority of the flak.  That said, there has undeniably been a lot to do for everyone.  

Whilst that might be a negative, there have been plenty of positives. The collective benefits to all Ignite staff of being part of Verisk are substantial.  Things we couldn’t countenance/afford as a small company are now the normal: Health care, big pension, gift matching, dental… the list goes on.  The call to discuss the benefits with staff took 90 minutes. There have also been substantial upgrades to our hardware, infrastructure, data security, and networks.

One of the things Verisk is very good at is not interrupting the flow of business as usual work. If ever the integration is becoming too onerous, it is put off for a few weeks so as not to be a disruption.

Getting to know a company of nearly 10,000 staff and tens, maybe even hundreds, of business units, has been quite a task. There are immeasurable benefits to being part of such an organisation – learning which are the relevant ones and which order to attack things in is the real challenge. After 100 days I feel I am now getting a sense of the whole. Everyone has been incredibly welcoming and generally disabused me of the misapprehension that large companies move slowly and attract people who do likewise. There’s lots going on and many opportunities.

I feel like I’m only just scratching the surface so far… let’s see how things have got on by day 200…