Merging your newly purchased company with your existing business can be a complex process, a number of problems can arise. For instance, cultural differences between the two companies can undermine the success of the deal, and coordination problems can be greater than expected.
In the course of our work with clients wee have encountered and solved many of the post-acquisition integration issues.
We give consideration to the following processes:
- Review different options for an appropriate organisational design for the target company, rather than imposing your own structure.
- Manage the issues around control. Centralised control that deprives the target company’s management team of autonomy might demotivate and result in a poor performing organisatin. Similarly, decentralised control might mean that direction is lost and anticipated benefits may not be realised. We help you design and implement the most appropriate approach.
- Design appropriate incentives for the acquired company’s management team. Remembering that previous compensation arrangements affect how any new arrangements are perceived.
- Standardise pay scales, work rules and brands.
- Worker dissatisfaction can be very damaging, especially if you are a service industry or if key employees have a high degree of bargaining power.
- Typical post-acquisition integration issues will vary according to the nature of the acquisition and the companies concerned but there are common threads:
- Communication to customers, employees, shareholders and regulatory bodies.
- Human capital issues such as relocation and severance packages, alignment (or not) of back office and customer – facing functions.
- Sales and marketing issues such as customer integration and communications, pricing, website integration and co-branding.
- Financial matters including financial reporting, integration and consolidation of banking, sales and purchasing accounts and other functions.
- IT integration across platforms such as websites, procure to pay and various secondary platforms or cloud or on premise applications.
