Integrating merged or acquired organizations is a difficult and time-consuming task. Not only must managers attend to the day-to-day running of the company's operations, but they may also be faced with numerous situations that they have neither the time nor experience to deal with. It’s no wonder that such a high percentage of integrations are deemed as unsuccessful by the firms involved.

We help companies make their mergers or acquisitions successful by providing expertise in integrating the newly-acquired operation into their organization. We provide experienced "arms and legs" to help manage and perform some of the many activities required that their own staff may simply not have the time to perform.

As a result, many of the problems typically associated with mergers or acquisitions – lower production, loss of key talent, employees focusing on personal concerns, decreases in customer service, and reduced profits – can be minimized or avoided.

Our Services

While every deal is different – and every client has different needs – there are a number of areas in which we can assist you in your integration efforts:

Integration Planning

We rapidly gather real and relevant information that enables you to understand the current state of each company's strategy, culture, people processes, and management systems so that you can identify and prioritize those areas that must be brought into alignment quickly.

Strategy Alignment

We work with the transition and management teams to develop a common understanding of the roles of both companies, their overall strategies, and the way that business will be conducted in the future to achieve the firm’s overall objectives

Culture Integration

In many unsuccessful acquisitions it is not the strategy, finances, processes, or technology that don’t work…it is because the companies’ cultures conflict and employees are never able to work well together. We identify those specific cultural aspects and behaviors with the most immediate impact on issues of integration and performance and then work with you – by developing communication, leadership, training, and performance management systems – to bring about the necessary changes.

Communications

Faced with the uncertainty of working for a new organization, employees often focus on the "me" issues: Will I have a job, will my pay and benefits change, who will I report to, will I have to move, what will "they" be like to work for? When they are worrying about these issues they are not focusing on customers, their jobs, or the company. We help our clients develop and implement a comprehensive communication strategy that will help ensure that employees remain focused on customers and productivity.

Employee Retention

The uncertainty that accompanies change – as well as outside forces such as recruiters and competitors – often conspires to take a company’s best employees just when the company needs them the most. We help our clients develop and implement a "re-recruitment and retention" strategy that identifies crucial employees or skills and the impact of their potential loss, and develops specific actions, timing, and responsibilities for keeping them with the firm for the needed period of time.

Other Human Capital Support

While many of the human capital issues that must be resolved during integration can be handled internally, because of the urgency, additional strain on resources, and unique situations that acquisitions often entail many firms find that these functional issues are better outsourced. Among the issues that we often help with are:

• Designing organization structure and job roles
• Determining staffing and competency requirements
• Developing performance management systems
• Evaluating and integrating reward systems
• Providing leadership and management training

In short, Banner Consulting & Coaching International brings to the table experience and tools that can help assure that the organization’s strategies, operations, systems, and people will be effectively integrated so that the gains that the deal was designed to bring about will happen faster and with less disruption.