According to the consulting firm Accenture, “as increased competition drives acquirers to pay closer to the full market value for these companies, the relentless pursuit of accelerated value creation is critical....The clock is ticking. Any delay in capturing the value [of the merger] results in significant losses for the company and an uneasiness among analysts and investors who are waiting for that value to show up in the financials. Companies must therefore up their entire game and become much better and much faster at exploiting synergies and capturing value."
“Post-merger activities should be prioritized according to the value they create. For example, if the greatest value in a merger is cross selling to the new base of common customers, then integration needs to enable and ensure the rapid transfer of customer information and the development of integrated account plans. Lower-value activities can simply be postponed.”
Accenture even recommends bringing the two organizations together before the merger is closed so that the acquirer can gain their return on investment as soon as possible. In order to do so and be in compliance with government requirements, a third-party is needed to analyze the data. This is a process that Accenture calls a “clean room”.
Even if it is not possible to bring the organizations together prior to closing for legal reasons or it is just not practical, if one of the main reasons for the acquisition is to increase market share, then one of the very first things that the newly created organization should do is integrate the customer bases of the two organizations. With this integrated customer view, you can plan and execute on the cross-selling and up-selling opportunities created by the merger. Using internal data as well as appending external marketing data, you can enhance this integrated customer view even further in order to find the multiple locations for organizations that are related to your customers. The sooner that you can integrate your customer data and understand the uniqueness and overlap within the customer base, the sooner you can achieve the return on investment that was anticipated when the acquisition was made.
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