When an HR technology vendor is acquired or merges, buyers inherit a contract whose terms — pricing, support, roadmap, data handling — can shift overnight. Brian Heger, an HR practitioner and writer, has published a 10-question due diligence checklist designed to help HR, talent acquisition and people-operations teams interrogate exactly that risk.

The framework is a direct response to a familiar pattern: acquisition announcements arrive as press releases full of growth language, while the operational consequences for existing customers surface later, in renewal conversations and support tickets. Heger's list converts the announcement into a structured inquiry the customer — not the vendor — controls.

What does the checklist ask buyers to do?

Heger organizes vendor due diligence around 10 questions that an acquiring or acquired HR tech provider should be able to answer in writing. The questions push past the deal narrative and into the mechanics of the customer relationship, covering the areas where M&A most often changes what an employer actually purchased.

The practical use case is broad. Any employer running a core HR platform, an applicant tracking system or a point solution is a potential customer of a vendor that gets acquired. Heger's framing assumes HR teams hold procurement leverage they often fail to exercise: the right to ask, before renewal, what the transaction means for them.

Why is this a people-process question, not just a procurement one?

Vendor consolidation touches decisions HR leaders own directly. If an acquired product is sunset, the affected processes — recruiting workflows, onboarding sequences, performance cycles, reporting — must be rebuilt on a replacement platform, often under a migration timeline the vendor sets. If pricing terms change at renewal, the cost lands in the HR technology budget. If data practices shift under a new parent company, the compliance exposure lands with the employer, not the vendor.

Heger's checklist functions as an early-warning instrument for those scenarios. By asking the 10 questions shortly after an acquisition or merger is announced, HR teams gain lead time to evaluate alternatives, renegotiate terms or budget for migration before a deadline forces the decision.

How should employers put the questions to work?

The framework suits several moments in the vendor lifecycle:

• At announcement, when a current provider discloses an acquisition or merger and the customer needs to assess continuity risk.
• At renewal, when changed ownership is a legitimate basis to renegotiate price, service levels and contract exit terms.
• At selection, when a prospective vendor's ownership structure and acquisition history signal how stable its roadmap commitments are.

For HR leaders, the checklist is also an internal alignment tool. The answers a vendor gives — or refuses to give — give talent acquisition, HR operations, IT and procurement a shared factual basis for a stay-or-switch decision, rather than each function assessing the risk from its own corner.

What is the broader context?

HR technology has seen sustained consolidation, and acquirers routinely frame deals as product enhancements. Heger's contribution is to flip that framing: the burden of proof sits with the vendor. A customer paying for a platform today has a legitimate claim to know whether the platform's direction, support model and cost structure will look the same in twelve months.

The 10-question format is deliberately compact — short enough to send to an account manager as-is, structured enough to compare answers across vendors. That portability is the point: due diligence only works if it happens consistently, and a short standard list is more likely to be used than a bespoke audit.

Employers that build M&A trigger questions like Heger's into their vendor management practice will enter the next acquisition announcement with a defined process rather than a wait-and-see posture. As consolidation in HR technology continues, the vendors that survive it with customer trust intact will be the ones that answer this kind of checklist without hesitation.