Congratulations! You’ve just closed on that multimillion-dollar acquisition that took a ton of time, due diligence, negotiations, and effort.  It was Blood, Sweat, and Tears of up to a year or more to acquire that AMAZING product or service that will help you get that edge over your competitors.  AND NOW WHAT?

You’re getting pressure from Management, Board Members, CFO and others to make a return on this investment that works and makes sense. It’s now time to get to the real work: How to incorporate what your organization has acquired and add it to your range of products and services.

Thru due diligence you got a jump start of this real work – beginning to peel back the layers of the acquisition target – what can you carry forward into integration:  

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Does this new product/service complement current offerings?
You’ll want to ensure that this new product or service has the right place in your current offering. Does it exist in the same area as the Parent Company?  I.e., Financial Services, MarTech, Telecom, or any other industry.

Do we have an Upsell or Cross-Sell opportunity?
No doubt during due diligence you recognized if you had a natural pipeline for this product. Having an existing customer base that has a need for this new service where you have good, established relationships, open the door for your current customer base to become advisors on integration as well as First Adopters of new products.

Can we utilize our market position as a leader and Adopter of New Tech/Services?
If you’re lucky enough to be a market leader, can you leverage what you have and show the ability to be a trendsetter in the area.

The next parts are trickier, but EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, getting deep and peeling back the next layer:

Do we currently have the right people to support this integration?
Across your organization you’ll be taking inventory of people skills both in the existing organization and the acquired organization. Does your current Sales and Business Development organization have the ability to be trained on these new products and services, were these skills gained through the acquisition and will that bring the skillsets needed to quickly adopt and go to market.  

Within your marketing organization – how quickly are they able to pivot campaigns, cross sell and communication strategy to deliver a single brand experience for your customers? This will guide your ability to go to market and your commercialization strategy long term.  

What will leadership of the integrated organization look like?
Of course, you had some ideas of how the integration of management would work – and as you get into the integration, you’ll want to evaluate the soft and hard skills of your now much larger leadership team. Organizations change and so do their needs.  This may be one of the more critical elements of change – as your leaders will set the tone for the culture of the new organization. That level of change often most impacts the rest of the people inside the organization, and what’s felt inside is inevitably felt outside.  

Culture you said, what about it?
Organization culture is almost never a direct one to one match – as the culture of an organization includes everything from how it feels to work inside an organization, how it’s lead, how people dress and communicate. You’ll want to assess as quickly as possible if there are different styles of working that may make certain points of integration more difficult. How can you get the internal teams to work together to realize the goals and outcomes of the now combined organization?

What about technology and process?
Inevitably each organization has their own tools and technology – they use Marketo we use Pardot for example. There will also be differences in process – one organization has three development environments and the other has 4. You’ll want to be diligent about understanding each way of working before adopting one over the other. Identify which processes and technology are most critical to the integrated organization before reconciling them all.  

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At CMG we recognize that change is part of being in business, more so today than twenty years ago. Our transform, grow, thrive model is built to ensure there’s a runway for a path to long term growth and continuous adaption. Transformation is in our DNA – with team members having been acquired, acquiring and helping organizations grow in multiple market segments. We partner with organizations to help you evolve and become: A Market Leader.

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