M&A Integration
Integration does not start at close. It starts at diligence.
Most deals are modelled by people who will not be there on Monday morning. We run the integration itself, on either side of the deal, with a framework built over twelve acquisitions.
Twelve integrations, including a five-agency roll-up run as COO of a private equity backed platform. Certified Acquisition Integration Manager. See what the work produced.
The problem
Why do acquisitions fail to deliver?
Usually not because the thesis was wrong. It is because nobody decided what kind of integration this was. Are you absorbing the company, leaving it alone, rolling it into a platform or fixing something that turned out to be broken? Those are four different jobs with four different plans, and teams routinely start doing all of them at once.
The numbers in the model were real. Nobody was accountable for going and getting them. The second reason is timing: integration planning that starts after the close has already lost ninety days, and ninety days is where the value goes.
The framework
First, decide which integration this actually is
Four approaches. Pick one deliberately, before the close, and tell everybody which one it is. Most of the damage we have been called in to repair started with this decision being left implicit.
Consolidation
Absorb it. One brand, one system, one team. The fastest route to taking cost out and the fastest route to losing the people and the customers who made it worth buying. Move quickly and be honest about what is going away.
Leave autonomous
You bought it because it works. Do not break it. Integrate the reporting and the money, leave the operating model alone and be disciplined about what “leave alone” actually means, because it erodes by accident.
Roll-up
This one will not be the last. So the job is not to integrate a company, it is to build the machine that integrates the next five. Standardize once, and the third deal costs a fraction of the first.
Fix the mismatch
Diligence missed something, and now you own it. The plan is triage before integration: stop the bleeding, find out what is actually true, then decide which of the other three approaches you are really running.
How we run it
Then run it like an operation, not a project plan
An integration is not a checklist. It is a temporary organization with its own leaders, its own decisions and its own clock, running alongside two businesses that still have to serve customers on Monday. We stand that organization up, staff it and run it until it is no longer needed.
Ask the questions you will wish you had asked
Financial diligence tells you what they earned. It does not tell you whether the business runs without its owner, which determines whether you actually get what you paid for. That is where integration really begins.
One page everybody has read
What we bought, why, which of the four approaches we are running, what stays, what goes and who decides. Most integrations do not have this, which is why people are still arguing about it in month five.
A name against every piece
Finance, systems, people, customers, brand. Each with a lead, a charter, a deadline and a number. Not a committee. A person who is answerable.
A cadence that survives the honeymoon
A status rhythm that makes the slippage visible early, when it is still cheap. Integrations do not fail on day ninety. They fail on day twelve and nobody notices until day ninety.
Both sides
Buying, or being bought
If you are buying
We join before the close, tell you what diligence did not and then run the integration. Your leadership team does not have a spare person to do this, and asking them to integrate while they operate is how both jobs get done badly.
If you are being bought
A buyer pays for what they can verify and discounts what they cannot. We get the business into a state where the answer to every diligence question already exists, and we sit on your side of the table while they ask.
We prepare the business and we protect the owner. We do not broker the deal, produce the valuation or practice law. Your banker, your accountant and your attorney do that, and we work alongside them.
FAQ
Questions we get
We have already closed. Is it too late?
No, and this is when most people call. It is more expensive than starting at diligence, because you are now unpicking decisions that were made by default rather than on purpose. But the first thing we do is the same either way: work out which of the four integrations you are actually running, and tell everyone.
Do you replace our banker or our attorney?
No, and we would be bad at it. They run the transaction. We make the business worth transacting on, and then we make the thing you bought actually work. We are usually introduced by them.
How big does the deal need to be?
Smaller than most integration firms will touch. The large consultancies staff these with a team and price accordingly. We are one operator who has done this twelve times, which is why it works at the size where an owner is buying a competitor.
When should we bring you in?
During diligence, before the purchase agreement is signed. That is when the integration decisions are cheapest to make and when we can still change what you are agreeing to. After the close is normal and it still works. It just costs more.
Do you only work on the buy side?
No. Integration is mostly a buy-side job, but the preparation that makes a business survive someone else’s diligence is the same work seen from the other side, and that sits on our sell track.
What does it cost?
It is scoped before we start, against the size of the deal and the state of the two businesses. We do not quote a package price for integration work, because the range between a bolt-on and a platform roll-up is too wide for a number to mean anything.
Is the deal as good as it looks?
The free Deal Risk Check flags the biggest operational risk in your deal in a few minutes, from the people who have done the diligence and run the integration.
We are usually introduced by a banker, a broker or an accountant. If you are one, here is how the referral works.