The successful implementation of a business integration strategy can be a powerful way to achieve growth. However, integration can be challenging, and a project is only as successful as the strength of its plan. Identifying and aligning goals is a critical piece of the puzzle, but ample consideration must also be given to potential risks, roadmap effectiveness, and resource allocation. When the planning stage is rushed, at least 70% of post-merger integrations fail to achieve the deal thesis.
Another common weakness in business integration strategies is an underestimation of the resources required in order to implement the plan properly. When a strategy relies entirely on internal resources, teams can quickly become overwhelmed or overworked, leading to burnout, organizational gaps, and substantial, costly delays. Hiring additional leaders requires a great deal of time—another resource that’s severely lacking when speed and momentum are essential.
Frequently, companies will engage an outside consulting firm to assist with strategic planning or execution. These arrangements can provide crucial support, but they also tend to be fairly rigid in scope and focused on broad objectives. Once the merger is closed and basic workstreams are in place, the consulting firm’s engagement concludes. But internal teams often aren’t yet acclimated to the resulting process changes and organizational shifts.
A Layered Integration Process
The strongest approach is a layered one that allows for greater flexibility and efficiency while ensuring the project is fully supported from beginning to end—and beyond. By bringing in independent integration consultants, an organization can bridge gaps wherever and whenever they might pop up. These highly experienced, deeply knowledgeable experts also offer an unbiased perspective that’s invaluable during initial strategic stages and indispensable when issues emerge.
Whether the integration is being handled entirely internally or with the assistance of an outside consulting firm, independent business integration managers can provide an additional, much-needed layer of support. They can even help identify potential acquisition targets.
We’re going to explore three of the most helpful ways independent talent can be deployed to strengthen your business integration strategy.
1. During Initial Planning Stages
Due Diligence Doesn’t Replace Integration Strategy
Business integrations have the potential to drive growth and improve an organization’s competitive position in a number of ways. Strategic mergers, acquisitions, and vertical integrations provide access to economies of scale, larger market share, and streamlined supply chains. Through diversification, conglomerations can help reduce risk exposure and accelerate cross-industry innovation. Regardless of the type of integration, however, one thing remains true across the board: Success depends on early, consistent alignment.
Due diligence conducted prior to closing the deal can uncover and potentially help resolve points of difference, but any discoveries or resolutions do not, by themselves, define a fully mapped-out plan for integration. The integration process requires its own due diligence, and a neutral third party, such as an independent integration consultant, can provide a fresh perspective, one uninfluenced by the business negotiations themselves.
An On-Demand Integration Management Office
These highly skilled consultants can also operate like an on-demand integration management office (IMO), bringing in industry-specific expertise to help businesses outline clear goals, identify potential risks, and establish effective roadmaps and timelines.
This was the case when a global pharmaceutical company acquired a large company and decided to use on-demand talent through BTG to drive the HR integration. The team of integration experts that BTG provided established critical workstreams and bridged knowledge gaps when internal expertise was insufficient.
Cost-Efficient Collaboration
Independent integration consultants are also more cost-effective than permanent hiring. They’re skilled at hitting the ground running, and the flexible, temporary nature of their engagements allows them to jump in—or out—whenever necessary. They often come from traditional consulting backgrounds, which can help smooth coordination with outside firms.
2. During Execution
Integrating Tech Ecosystems
As the integration process gets underway, it’s essential to foster and maintain alignment across teams and ensure the smooth integration of systems. IT, in particular, requires additional diligence, as the entities being integrated each have their own “tech ecosystem.” A thorough application rationalization process can help uncover synergies and redundancies to improve asset management and drive overall efficiency.
Impartial, independent integration consultants can ease the burden on internal teams by evaluating these various IT assets to identify optimization opportunities. This was the case when BTG connected an F500 B2B company with an experienced technology strategist. After the company completed its acquisition, it brought back the strategist and three additional consultants to support its lean PMO in leading workstreams, scoping resources, and monitoring progress of the systems integration.
Keeping Internal Teams Aligned
The integration of teams is similarly complex, yet it requires a different, specific sort of expertise. This type of human-centered change management expertise is less common in internal teams, unless the organization frequently targets integration opportunities. Even in those cases, the objectivity offered by an independent third party can be preferable when developing and executing plans for process standardization, employee training, and communication processes.
When an F500 tech company realized it lacked the internal change management expertise it needed in order to integrate the employees from its newly acquired global data firm, they turned to BTG for support. BTG brought in a former Arthur Andersen consultant to design and lead a comprehensive change management plan that included employee training and retention benchmarking, as well as content review and approval policies. The processes she established helped position both the company and the employees for post-integration success.
3. Post Integration
Smoothing Transitions
Engagements with traditional consulting firms are frequently focused on high-level strategic planning, though sometimes these teams can also be brought in to help with execution. Once this support ends, however, the transition to internal ownership can remain a challenge.
Often, retained employees are still acclimating to new systems and processes, and additional support is needed to maintain momentum and accelerate growth. The post-integration adjustment period is still part of the integration process, and outside support can help smooth the transition.
Independent consultants can assist with post-merger integrations and other types of integration by applying specialized expertise to realize immediate gains and ensure long-term success. This was what happened when the board and executive teams of an F100 company wanted their internal teams to start owning the workstreams that a strategy consulting firm had implemented during the integration process.
They had acquired a multi-billion-dollar company seven months earlier, and the consulting firm had established an IMO and fully staffed it with more than 50 of their own people. Once the firm’s engagement concluded, the lean internal team that remained wasn’t resourced well enough to keep up the pace. Skills gaps and bandwidth shortages prevented them from being able to realize critical synergies.
The company turned to BTG for on-demand talent, and we delivered seven highly skilled consultants with integration-specific expertise to assist with knowledge transfer and support the internal team while they assumed ownership of the new workstreams. By working together, the teams were able to help the company realize exceptional savings and growth opportunities a full quarter sooner than expected.
Filling Leadership Gaps
Other times, resource gaps emerge during the pre-close process or during the integration process itself. Filling these gaps can be difficult in the absence of concrete knowledge about the ultimate deal approval or integration timeline, or about whether the roles will be needed long-term. The niche expertise and wealth of experience that independent talent possess often makes them a good fit for interim leadership positions in these scenarios. In the meantime, the on-demand business integration manager can help further define the new role and source full-time candidates to fill it permanently.
This was how a private-equity-backed provider of labor market data handled things when it realized it would need a long-term HR leader after acquiring its biggest competitor. BTG delivered a senior HR executive to help integrate their newly doubled workforce, a process that included resolving critical culture issues and developing policies to manage performance and enhance employee growth.
Alongside these broader objectives, the integration consultant also worked to attract and recruit a permanent leader for the company’s HR function. By clearly defining the ongoing support that the role would require, the talent was able to set up the incoming leader for success.
The Bottom Line
Anytime an organization pursues a merger, acquisition, vertical integration, or conglomeration, risk is inherent. By putting a solid business integration strategy in place, however, companies can reduce this risk while also ensuring they’re able to fully leverage combined strengths and increase collective efficiencies.
An organization may choose to manage the integration internally or engage an outside firm for strategy and/or implementation support, but the benefits of either option are accompanied by challenges that can threaten the integration’s success. Gaps will pop up, whether due to a lack of integration-specific expertise, bandwidth, or ongoing support.
Rather than waiting for the gaps to appear, a solid post-merger integration plan identifies opportunities to bridge them with another layer of support: highly skilled independent talent. These cost-efficient, on-demand resources offer targeted expertise backed by decades of experience—not to mention the flexibility they provide. When it comes to de-risking integrations, a layered approach is a smart approach.
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