How to deal with operations cases ?

Hello,

I've seen cases being given - also in MBB firms - that are very operational, who deal with IT Operations for example. I was wondering what would be the best way to structure these, as they don't look like typical strategy problems ?

One example: Our client is the CEO of a large insurance company who acquired a smaller insurance company. Both have their own IT systems and they want to harmonize them. It has been estimated by their IT service provider that it would take 18 months, but this is unacceptably long for the CEO. He has reached out to us to help them do it faster.

How would you go about structuring and solving this kind of problem ? This was actually given at the last round in a MBB.

Thanks !