How can an acquirer manage all the details involved?

First, it is important to identify each company’s resources, processes, and responsibilities, and decide if they will be integrated. See Appendix 9B for a checklist of assets featuring key resources (human, financial, tangible, and intangible/intellectual), key processes (primary processes such as management systems, support processes such as information technology, and, in a class by itself, internal financial controls), and key responsibilities (commitments to various stakeholders).

Then for each area to be integrated, identify:

■  What needs to be done (tasks and subtasks)

■  Who must do it (task owner)

■  Resources needed (prerequisites)

■  Information needed (tactical data)

■  Insight needed (strategic questions)

See Appendix 9C for an integration planning worksheet on these points, and see Appendix 9D for an integration timeline. Before using these tools, however, more guidance could be helpful. This chapter will give some general guidance on how to integrate key resources, processes, and responsibilities. It will also take a closer look at compensation, a phenomenon that involves all three of these company dimensions: it rewards a resource, it entails a process, and it constitutes a responsibility. In conclusion, this chapter will discuss issues pertaining to postmerger divestiture.OK