Mergers & Acquisitions Integration Handbook: Helping Companies Realize The Full Value of Acquisitions

CHAPTER 8

Executing Your Integration Plan

In this chapter, you will learn the following:

• Creating functional integration work streams.
• Prioritizing integration work.
• Understanding work-stream timing and cross-functional dependencies.
• Seeing which areas require extra focus in some functional work-plan examples.

Prior to beginning the execution of your integration plan, make sure you have the pre-planning activities in the previous chapters wrapped up, especially in terms of the following:

• Collecting and reviewing data documentation of both the acquiring and acquired companies.
• Creating and approving the integration project charter for your integration plan, including the IMO setup.
• Formulating the integration team’s organizational structure as well as its members’ roles and responsibilities.

After you have gone through the steps in creating and coordinating your integration plan up to this point, next it’s important to develop your initial integration plans with your functional resource contacts. At the highest level, concentrate your efforts in three key areas:

1. Your initial integration project plans. This includes defining the key elements, such as legacy functional work plans and drafts of integration work plans for key functions (e.g., the integration work plan for the HR team).

2. Your communication plan. It is important to clarify two key integration terms before you delve into execution. Day one most often means the day a deal officially closes and is announced to ...