Just bought a business? Turning 2 into 1
So you’ve made the big move… Your business is in growth mode and you’ve decided to accelerate that growth by acquiring another advice business that’s for sale. The price has been agreed, as has the structure of the deal relating to the earn-out period and terms for the owner of the acquired business.
While this is a big step and great progress to get to this stage, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Because according to a 2017 Harvard Business Review report, the failure rate for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) sits between 70 percent and 90 percent! A very scary figure… Now of course this figure applies across all industries and you can argue that’s it’s different when buying another financial advice business. But there is still lots to consider if you want to integrate the acquisition successfully and maximise the value of the deal. So where do you start?
Have a very clear strategy
Of course you likely will have given this a lot of thought before you get anywhere near the integration phase. Hopefully you have a very clear vision of what you are setting out to achieve. Does the acquisition simply increase the number of clients of your business, or is it opening up new markets? Is it giving you capabilities in new areas of financial advice, or is the acquisition delivering significant cost savings when the two businesses are put together?
Know where you are going and what it is that you are trying to achieve, as your strategy should be the guiding “North Star” for your integration process.
Build a very robust plan
You need to have an integration plan for every area of the business. If you want the integration to be successful, this plan has to be developed carefully and thoroughly, building a clear roadmap for every key service area – your advice process, your service proposition, your compliance process and right through to your HR processes. You have to ensure that you have the required resources in place to actually develop and follow through on this plan.
If instead everyone just blindly “hits the ground running”, there is a strong likelihood of a significant fall-off in performance and even chaos a little bit down the road! To avoid this, give some thought to the following areas before you set out to integrate the two businesses.
Consider culture
This is an area that the leader of the business needs to consider carefully and be very involved in. Are the cultures of the two organisations similar or are they quite different? What is the desired culture of the merged operation going forwards and what are the main steps to help you to start building this culture? This will need clear leadership and involvement of all of the staff.
Good integration takes time and focus
It won’t just blindly happen. Your carefully developed plan will need to be delivered in a structured way. This will take the time and focus of some key people – maybe you, maybe members of your team. You need to recognise the cost of this as the focus of these people for a period of time will be on integration of the two businesses, rather than increasing the income of the business. However this short-term cost will definitely pay dividends in the longer-term.
Who are the right people to carry out this work?
If you want the integration to happen successfully, you need to have the right people carrying it out. There can be a temptation for the leader of the business to lead the integration work. However it may be that their attention is better spent elsewhere, for example leading the commercial focus of the business for a while and guiding the expectations and requirements of clients and business partners. The leader of the business should be close to the integration, but does not necessarily need to lead it. Sometimes there appears to be an “easier” solution and the integration process is passed to someone who “is not that busy”, but who may be completely unsuited to the role. This is a recipe for disaster.
The integration role is best carried out by someone who is very structured in their work and who is capable of keeping a project with multiple strands on track. If they have very high credibility in the office and strong relationships with colleagues, this again significantly enhances the likelihood of success.
Follow through
Finally, don’t get side-tracked by current business pressures, see the integration through to the end. That is not to say of course that you won’t change tack at times, but when this happens, tweak your integration plans rather than leave them behind.
A good integration process will help you ensure a successful result after your acquisition. Follow it through relentlessly and you can reach out confidently towards your goals.
