Merger and Acquisition frequently begin with the best of intentions, whether the owners of the companies are pursuing their exit strategy and want to sell or a high-growth company is seeking an even bigger boost by partnering with a business that has complementary intellectual property, talent, or a hold on a specific geographic area. But not every transaction qualifies as a successful merger and acquisition. Here’s how to approach your upcoming transactions with a clear head in order to accomplish your business’ most recent strategic objective and make it a success, from the day of the offer to a year after the merger and beyond.
How to Make a Merger and Acquisition Successful
You should define your concept of success before entering the transaction. Revenue growth, client expansion, and concrete exposure to new customer categories can all be used as indicators of an M&A’s success. A decision can also be made about whether or not the company was able to keep its key employees and keep its core business running smoothly during the process.
In order to avoid making the same mistakes as other businesses, M&A specialists become invaluable resources during this period. They may provide examples of successful mergers and acquisitions as well as lessons learned.They can also step in for the important financial team members who need to focus on the deal’s specifics. They may also be able to give you examples of successful merger and acquisition strategies so you can choose the one that will work best for your business’s size, complexity, maturity, and corporate culture.
6 Steps to a Successful Company Mergers and Acquisitions
So, we’ve put together six tips for successful merger integration that can be used for a wide range of mergers.
1. Consider perspective
During a merger, the goals of the two businesses are united into a single, more powerful entity.But legally and practically, it nearly always comes down to one side being the acquirer and the other the acquiree. In your analysis, it’s crucial to take such viewpoints into account. In the end, the difference between the firm that bought the other firm and the firm that was bought is less important than what the new firm will do in the future.However, the acquisition usually takes the initiative in the integration. Employees at the acquiree will get uneasy if the go-forward plan is not made apparent to them, and some of the finest ones may opt to quit. Make sure everyone is aware of how the new business plan will benefit everyone while utilising all the required expertise to prevent it from happening.
2. Appoint a knowledgeable, impartial leader
Four questions need to be addressed before integration work can start.
- Which divisions of the joint enterprise ought to be integrated?
- Which divisions of the joint firm ought to continue to exist separately?
- Which divisions of the joint firm ought to be sold or split off?
- Who should be in charge to make sure the two businesses work well together and answer these questions?
The answer to the previous query is crucial. People often choose an executive from within the company to oversee the M&A activity and name this person before the announcement. But, from what I’ve seen, it’s better to choose a qualified, unbiased interim executive or a successful merger and acquisition leader from outside each firm. Since doing so gives the business access to someone with extensive M&A integration experience and an unbiased perspective on the strategy, process integration, organisation design, change management, and IT support structure of the combined company—not to mention a neutral view of what might otherwise devolve into a highly politicised process—this is why.
3. Maintain cultural awareness.
Anxiety quickly creeps in when the possibility of a business takeover enters the company rumour mill. Work could slow down, good employees might leave, and everyone might get sidetracked from their most important jobs by gossip. People’s and corporate cultures differ from one another. If the group doesn’t have access to a change management expert who knows the differences and can suggest strategies that would help the group as a whole, this could be a hard problem to solve. When you make the right decisions about people, especially early on, you can set up influencers whose ideas can be used throughout the integration process. That is especially true when a person who was earlier opposed to the change starts to embrace it and encourages company-wide synergy.
4. Start off by doing it correctly
Simplifying organisational structures, business procedures, and IT systems is never easy. But by taking the time to do things right from the beginning, you can make sure that the joint business and the people who make it successful will benefit from further actions. I refer to this as the “super glue method”: do it once, thoughtfully, and with an eye toward the finish line. Unfortunately, many businesses find themselves using a number of band-aid solutions while they decide on the best course of action and which areas need to be merged. Sticky notes are like this because jobs and directions change all the time as new information comes in.
5. Research the market and your sector
After deciding what you wish to improve, you must explain why you want to improve in this particular area (and if growth is even possible). The easiest method to figure out whether your targeted development is both required and possible is to research the situation in your industry. As an example, you may conduct surveys and focus groups with current and future clients or look at previous industry studies. The information and data you find at this stage will affect the project finance’s goals for growth and expectations, which will help you figure out its schedule, budget, and end goal.
6. Specify growth targets
The following stage is to figure out how much you’ll be growing after figuring out what and why you’re growing. This is why defining a goal based on industry research is so crucial. These objectives should be based on your endpoint dreams of where you ideally want your firm to go, but they should also be feasible and practical. Take action to define your goals in terms of measurements and a schedule, then. A far more specific goal than “raising sales” is to “increase sales by 30% quarter-over-quarter for the next three years.”
Boost your chances of a successful merger and Acquisition.
There is more motivation than ever to use corporate cash reserves for acquisitions due to changes in the global economy. Want to raise your chances of success, save integration costs, and accelerate company performance? Forget about who is the acquirer and who is the acquirer and instead concentrate on selecting the best strategy and executives to align the combined business for the future; it is now one team!
