Time to integrate
It’s been a very busy few months for us but finally we’ve concluded our merger with a major competitor and now it’s all about focussing on the post-integration stuff – the details like e-mail addresses, business cards, billing cycles, PR etc; the strategic stuff of team building, culture and business growth.
Challenging but fun! However, what the whole process has highlighted is the importance of ensuring that you don’t lose sight of the business and its key drivers whilst you are immersed in the minutiae of the legal agreements, negotiations etc.
For us the process took about 5 months – for other businesses it could be much longer – and particularly in the current economic climate no business can afford to take its eyes off the ball for any longer than necessary.
It’s more important than ever to have a firm hand on cashflow, sales forecasts, debtor days and your FD will be well aware of that. Along comes an opportunity of an acquisition or merger and what happens is the key players get drawn into that situation and the business is neglected.
Upon reflection, that’s actually a major business opportunity for us – the ability to bring in an experienced, commercial part-time FD to either take over the day to day responsibilities or to work on the specific transactional requirements is a great facility for an incumbent FD to have available.
