Prepare for the long-term success of your deal

Integration and separation sound like opposing ideas—yet both can help provide a clear path for the future of your business. After a deal is closed and a business is sold, there’s more to be done before the champagne bottle is popped. You’ve now entered a new and critical phase that 2 in 3 businesses often fail to prepare for. How do you successfully join businesses, including their operations, products or services, and people? Or, how do you successfully carve out a piece of a business to sell? How do you know how much a piece of a business is worth that you want to buy?  

Whether integrating or separating a business, it’s a complex process that requires planning, communication, and expertise. Our team of experienced advisors can help you find the path forward

What is integration? 

Integration brings two or more companies together, after an acquisition, with the goal of combining the people, processes, and technology of the newly formed organization—for a seamless transition. 

What is separation? 

Separating a division—also known as a carve-out—or the sale of business, involves separating a business unit, subsidiary, or line of business from its parent company. Whether it’s a division, product line, brand, or a portfolio of assets, it’s essential to carefully plan the divestiture to get returns on your investment quickly. 

We can help you: 

Realize your deal’s value by planning, developing, and assessing your overall strategy, helping a complex transition run more smoothly. 

Identify and mitigate risks including those associated with a deal (e.g., customer retention, employee retention, infrastructure, etc.), business process risks (governance, resources etc., and market risks (economic downturns, new technologies etc.). 

Maintain business stability by avoiding disruptions to your day-to-day operations while completing your integration or separation strategies and checklists.   

Services at-a-glance
  • Integration and separation strategy development: Early-stage planning of how to integrate or divest an operation and achieve maximum value.  
  • Integration blueprints: Develop a blueprint that includes a list of critical activities to capture value and mitigate risk, and other supporting materials to launch an effort.  
  • Integration playbooks: Leverage the integration assignment to create a playbook, documenting processes and intellectual capital and creating a sustainable, repeatable process for future transactions. 
  • Integration readiness assessments: Does the business have a robust integration plan? A readiness assessment can quickly identify potential areas out-of-sync with objectives and improvements that enhance the overall process.   
  • Integration effectiveness assessment: How did the business perform in terms of the integration? Were all the objectives achieved? We can perform an effectiveness assessment 90- to 120-days post-closing, identifying areas that might have been missed or improvements for subsequent integration efforts. Sometimes, these reviews are performed as part of internal audit review. 
  • Separation interdependency assessment: Identify all entanglements between a seller’s organization and the target, which allows for decisions around the need for transition services, day one separation plans, and other actions to successfully operate the acquired operation at closing. 
  • Separation planning and execution: Define an optimal day one target operating model, the scope of transition services, and associated governance model; prepare a Day 1 Readiness Plan and Detailed Migration Plan to shift away from transitional support (buy-side); and address stranded costs (sell-side).   
  • Operational due diligence (e.g., commercial, IT/cybersecurity, HR, ESG, DE&I, cultural alignment, supply chain, and operations): Complements financial and tax due diligence, considering various operational areas that often impact the economics of a transaction. 
  • Synergy assessments: Assess the synergy assumptions provided by the seller or assumed by the buyer, considering whether there is fundamental underlying support. One of the primary reasons for deals failing to achieve the desired rates of return is over-estimating synergies; we can help mitigate this risk. 
  • Communications and change enablement planning: An integration is a significantly stressful event that can change the everyday lives of the target’s organization. Since most transactions are highly dependent on people, effective communications and change enablement can increase the level of acceptance to change and decrease the risk of key talent defecting.
INTEGRATION AND SEPARATION

When should integration planning begin?

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