integration

Inexperience and Bad Decisions Help Achieve the Goal  
By Jack Prouty, Past President, M&A Leadership Council

It is considered a given that deal-makers want to achieve M&A success, but occasionally I witness behavior that challenges this assumption. I so often write articles about how to be successful; however, .......

Building the Case for Your Integration Management Office
By Mark Herndon, Chairman of the M&A Leadership Council 

We’ve always believed that M&A success is “top-down strategy-led process highly dependent on superb, bottom-up integration program management, planning, and execution.” 

Differences Between the Art of M&A Integration and Program Management
By Mark Herndon, Chairman of the M&A Leadership Council 

“Several of our M&A team members have been to the M&A Leadership Council’s in-person workshop, The Art of M&A Integration. What is different in the new online workshop The Art of M&A Program Management that would be worth our time?”

5 Themes for Executing an Integration
Submitted by Tony Da Camara, Head of the Technology & Operations M&A Office for BMO Financial Group and candidate in the Certified M&A Specialist Program

In December 2010, my company bought an organization that was essentially the same size as our own – our largest acquisition to date. I was given the opportunity to run the full technology workstream, which was my first large integration and at least thirty times more complex than any other integration I had worked on. For the next two years, this integration became my life. I learned many things, experienced many surprises, made many mistakes and developed a tough skin.

The Biggest Challenges for HR in Mergers and Acquisitions
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman of the M&A Leadership Council

A couple of weeks ago, I attended our training program for Human Resource executives and had a chance to do a quick interview with 3 of our presenters: a global HR specialist, an attorney specializing in cross-border M&A and an HR specialist for post-merger integration. I asked each of them what they saw as the biggest challenges in their respective arena.  Here is what they had to say:

Hero Driven M&A vs. Well-Performed M&A
by Jack Prouty, President of M&A Leadership Council 

In our Art of M&A^SM training programs, the number one challenge listed by attendees is securing resources for the M&A effort. Specifically, there are not enough of them; they are untrained or unqualified; or they lack dedicated staff because MA&D is treated as a part-time job in addition to their normal job. Why does this continue to be such a major issue?

High Performance Integration
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman of The M&A Leadership Council and a member of the Board of M&A Standards

When I established my consulting organization in hopes of improving the Integration practices of corporate buyers, extensive research made it clear that poor results in mergers and acquisitions were because of the lack of one or more key elements.

Balancing Competing Initiatives     
By William Blandford, Managing Director at Blandford Associates and Member of The Board of M&A Standards

"Speed Dating" is defined as an organized process in which participants have one-on-one conversations, typically limited to less than ten minutes, for the purpose of getting to know others. I have used this "Speed Dating" process to identify and address the complex relationships among competing initiatives (referred to as interdependencies) with functional integration teams for acquisitions, especially in more complicated cases.

A First Step in M&A's: Know Thyself!
by Jack Prouty, President of M&A Leadership Council 

In both The Art of M&A Due Diligence and The Art of M&A Integration, we tell our attendees, “If you are going to take on acquisitions—especially if you are a serial acquirer—you must first be internally ready.” Since many of them are strategic buyers, we ask them to consider how an acquisition complements their existing business and supports their growth strategy. We recommend a number of preparations your business needs for M&A success, and these need to be done beforehand, not when you are face-to-face with the diligence effort.