Knowledge Exchange is a weekly series of educational articles that we encourage you to share and discuss with your colleagues and network. This month, we’re offering advice for enduring common business changes.
Change is scary yet necessary for business development and growth, and a merger or acquisition can be one of the biggest, most disruptive and impactful changes that can happen to a company.
Some business leaders and their employees may feel optimistic at the thought of having access to new resources or powerful potential, while others may worry about the unknown.
Despite the worry, many business owners go for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a means of achieving quick growth. When trading time for money, adding more resources (specifically, human capital) is the only way to handle more client work. In contrast, individual hiring for dedicated roles is a slow, imperfect process — especially if you factor in turnover happening simultaneously.
Thus, a lot of service professionals have used M&A as a scaling tool. Global PMI Partners reports that in the five years since 2018, there have been approximately 5,000 M&A transactions per year, resulting in an average global annual spend of $225 billion.
While these numbers indicate that professional services businesses are successfully growing, they don’t tell us how to navigate an M&A to grow in the long term. The trend begs a few questions:
Let’s address what you can do now, as you prepare for and walk through a merger or acquisition, to reduce the chances of running into roadblocks in the aftermath.
Feeling nervous about what the future holds pending a merger or acquisition is normal. New partners, processes and people can breed confusion and even threaten the stability of your business and your job.
Under these high-pressure circumstances, many leaders experience common change management mistakes.
To avoid these missteps and help your business or department prepare, take conscious corrective action. Face each of your worries head-on and devise an appropriate solution.
Depending on the nature of the business and services you offer, you could be uneasy about any number of specific things. The following are five of the most probable.
READ NEXT: Customizable Process Automation Facilitates a Smooth Company Expansion
Whatever your unique list looks like, prioritize addressing your top few concerns as early as possible. With the major worries taken care of, you’ll be less ruffled by additional unknowns — which are likely to crop up in a period of great change.
Let’s look at some best practices for achieving consistency amidst a merger or acquisition.
Unsurprisingly, getting more organized will help your business ride the waves of change with finesse. One of the fundamentals you won’t want to overlook if you’re preparing for a big change? Standard operating procedures (SOPs). And we’re not talking about the workflows that make your projects possible (although those are helpful, too).
An SOP is more focused on the internal workings of the business, which act as the foundation for your client work. These detailed procedures include how department meetings are conducted, when to use particular modes of communication and who’s responsible for approvals. It might be a traditional concept, but the SOP has long been a norm in business for a reason: You have to get the wheels turning before you can try to reach your destination.
How to accomplish this with Accelo: Once you’ve decided on the basics of your SOP, you can make the details less overwhelming by setting up custom triggers.
Depending on the size of the business and your leadership style, you may or may not have a handle on how your team interacts with clients. When your organization restructures, it’s key to keep a finger on the pulse of both internal and external communication, especially as it relates to client work.
If you want to have any hope of holding onto your existing clients and meeting the needs of newly acquired ones, you need consistency and visibility. Create a list of examples of language the business has historically used with clients and prospects, then give your entire team a way to align in how they speak to clients. A consolidated, client-focused platform like Accelo offers built-in solutions for this type of transition.
How to accomplish this with Accelo: If you haven’t already, it’s time to set up email syncing. Tracking a client’s entire history is easy when all of your emails live in the Activity Stream.
Employee sentiment should be another strong focus of merger or acquisition prep. Culture doesn’t start to matter only after two businesses fuse together and are forced to figure it out. On the contrary, having a solid set of company values and paying attention to current employees can help reduce anxiety and employee turnover as you enter this critical period.
Transparency, especially about the upcoming merger or acquisition, can get your team on the same page. It's especially vital to prioritize direct communication if you're blending remote cultures.
The above elements support stable processes in all areas of business by giving leaders and employees the same known sources of truth.
What does it look like to be truly ready for change? The CEO of GIANT Creative, Andrew Stephenson, took an enthusiastic approach to change management when his results-driven marketing agency was acquiring another business and implementing Accelo simultaneously. He chose to cease client work for two days to fully commit to training the newly expanded team on how to get the most out of the platform. Less than one month after going live, Andrew saw a tangible increase in internal communication efficiency.
No matter the size or newness of your team, find ways to optimize efficiency in our latest guide.
There is no objective answer as to whether M&A is the best scaling method for any one business, but your response as a leader or individual contributor can make it a favorable choice.
Along with a values-driven operational plan for managing change, you need to have the practical infrastructure to reduce any potential negative impacts.
A fully utilized, client-focused tech stack that supports process automation offers:
You already have this at your fingertips if you’re using Accelo. If your business is currently going through a merger or acquisition — or might in the future — we recommend you reach out to your Customer Success Manager to see how we can help you and your team navigate this business change.
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If you work in professional services and your organization is going through some big changes, find out how Accelo could offer invaluable support. Sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo.
