This blog is part of a series of five entries that discuss how understanding acquisition integration improves deal-making.
With larger deals, success is usually measured in financial terms, typically revenues, profits or share price. With lower-mid and mid-size integrations, you are generally acquiring for its future potential. Therefore, your measure of acquisition success should be if you have created the capability for future financial success.
If you have created the environment, infrastructure and culture to achieve future financial returns, you have completed a successful acquisition.
The integration is where the value of a deal is delivered. Before starting an integration, your definition of success should be collection of a non-financial measures. Examples could be:
- Release of a merged product line within 6 months of the acquisition
- Opening of new offices in a desired area within a projected timeline
- Retaining 90% of the acquired staff and doubling the size of the R&D team within a projected timeline
- Surveys showing an improvement of customer success by a projected percentage
These unambiguous, easy-to-understand measure are what an integration team calls the “integration objectives”. Achieving them is a clear measure of success or failure of an integration, and hence the acquisition.