Industrial Distribution - January/February 2014

www.inddist.com that may ultimately impact the overall schedule, if those action items or tasks are not completed by the required due date.

Policies

All policies – especially customer-facing ones – of the acquired company should be documented, and policy changes should be communicated to the appropriate stakeholders. As you rationalize the core data, certain policies may be uncovered. For example, if you have a customer with net 90-day payment terms, then a policy change and communication to that customer would likely be necessary to conform to your standard payment terms offered.

Issues/Decisions

As operational, personnel, or technical issues are uncovered, it is important to track those issues to completion with ownership and due dates. The resolved issues should have the decisions or solutions documented and filtered off your list. Often, an issue may resurface, and the solution will need to be revisited, so it is valuable to keep a record of the initial resolution handy.

Change Acceleration Process

Decreasing the amount of time to assimilate all entities onto one system will improve your time-line to return on investment of the merger or acquisition. Another tactic to rapidly implement acquired companies includes an effective project kickoff session, i.e., a Change Acceleration Process (CAP) workshop, to minimize employee resistance, attrition, and general dissatisfaction (which is often passed on from your staff to your customers). A CAP workshop can help establish an environment of shared need and common goals. It is the fastest way to drive sustainable change, and lowers the financial risk associated with mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a more positive outcome in a shorter timeframe.

Conclusion

Along with the technical migration, equally
important projects to pursue during the M&A
process should include:
• Human resources plans, systems, and poli-
cies.

• Marketing: A co-branding program is typical, with the acquired company’s logo being phased out over time.

• Sales territory alignment.

• Ecommerce website shopping permissions.

Approaching each aspect systematically, via the framework above, will allow you to properly scope the project, manage the strategic deliverables, and work towards a RAPID implementation.

Jon Snow, Director, Business Consulting Services, Epicor Software Corporation, has been the project manager on 200+ ERP implementations, and 40+ of them have been merger or acquisition projects. For more information about Epicor Software’s Business Consulting Services M&A Offering, please visit www.epicor.com.

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