How to integrate organisations effectively
Are you undergoing or about to begin a merger?
Integrating organisations is a great opportunity to scale up and become more robust, so you can increase your ability to provide the best possible support for your customers. But it’s a big undertaking.
If you’ve ever moved in with someone, you’ll know that integrating your stuff, managing shared utilities, and generally living together can be a challenge at first. Now imagine you have hundreds of assets, processes, and people to integrate, as well as customers to serve.
Where do you start? Keep reading…
"We get talent and scale from mergers."
Angela Braly (former President and CEO of WellPoint)
1. Create & communicate a shared vision
Mergers can create tension for everyone involved, so it’s important to communicate a shared vision from the start. Focusing on the purpose of the organisation will help stakeholders to become more open to change. Our Storytelling partner, Hilary Salzman at 22 Stories, can help you to communicate your shared mission, vision, and values as a merged company.
If you’re struggling to agree or have more serious clashes within your organisation, particularly amongst the senior stakeholders, our Business Psychologist, Hazel Anderson-Turner can help you to understand what influences the behaviour of your employees and build leadership resilience.
We can put you in touch with our partners.
2. Develop a clear target operating model
As a newly merged executive team, you need to design a business model that will deliver your mission and new strategic goals. Access our free guide for how to design your Target Operating Model (TOM).
3. Standardise processes & centralise systems
Whilst many organisations establish a robust and purposeful strategy, few go on to make significant changes to their processes.
The work that needs to go into your processes is vast and should not be underestimated. It spans from identifying what high-level processes you fundamentally need to deliver your new strategy, to integrating the way two (or more) organisations deliver your process at a task level. Without doing this you run the risk of delivering poor, inconsistent services, and creating stress and dissatisfaction amongst your customers and staff.
At the top-level, a process hierarchy model makes your processes easier to see & manage by creating a shared and systematic understanding of high-level, key-level, and critical processes. Learn more about creating a process hierarchy here. And for an example of how to integrate processes at an operational level, read our case study from Sovereign Housing here.
"Well, you would have to say what is the criteria to determine the success of any merger? It would have to be that the companies are stronger financially, that they took market share, and they are on a very steady footing in terms of their performance.."
Kevin B Rollins (former President and CEO of Dell Inc)
4. Measure the effectiveness of your merger
Lastly, the one question that will be in the minds of your customers, trustees / board members, and employees is – was it worth it? Ensuring you demonstrate the value of your merger using quantitative and qualitative metrics is key to managing these key stakeholders.
In the video below, Rhiannon Gibbs outlines how to measure the effectiveness of your merger. Unsurprisingly, it all leads back to the reason why you merged in the first place.
Our support to deliver successful mergers spans from creating effective operating models, integrating services, and designing & implementing new processes, to supporting the design and delivery of a new corporate culture. If this is of interest to you, email us at hello@ad-esse.com or use our Contact page.
Join our mailing list
Subscribe for business improvement newsletters by filling in the form below.