Building Culture While Keeping Everyone Aligned on Project Goals
One of the largest home services companies in the United States generating more than $1B in revenue needed a way to streamline mergers and acquisitions as part of their strategy for rapid market expansion.
Challenge
A strategic part of this organization’s growth model is market expansion through mergers and acquisitions. The organization had processes in place, but the leadership team was having difficulty retaining talent from acquired companies. The organization needed a way to identify, attract, and excite the top acquired talent while moving everyone towards a 10-week transition process in finance, IT, HR, Legal, Sales, Marketing, and all other business areas. Optia Group was asked to create a reusable project plan and deliver a solution to socialize activities required to fully transition people, processes, and tools while building excitement with the acquired team.
Approach
We performed a process analysis to:
- Identify all roles, responsibilities, milestones, activities, and tasks required to fully transition an acquired business
- Address obsolete processes, gaps, redundancies, bottlenecks, and pain points
- Define standard processes and make improvements based on needs
We developed a template for a project plan to:
- Prioritize activities for both the buyer and acquired companies pre- and post-close
- Assign roles and responsibilities
- Ensure tasks are completed in a timely manner
We designed a digital playbook to:
- Communicate a roadmap for ten weeks after deal-close when broader team is involved
- Provide context behind what needed to be done and why so that everyone feels included
- Provide easy access to information resources needed to successfully complete integration goals
Outcome
After implementing the newly designed project plan/playbook solution, the organization was able to streamline processes, communicate expectations, and track key measures for success. This organization continues to see a return on investment by leveraging the best-in-class solution for each merger and acquisition deal.
