The Certified Acquisition Integration Manager
Learn how to Successfully Integrate Acquired Businesses
Training, certification and mentoring for you to deliver the value of your M&A through successful integration
Build in-house skills for integrating acquired lower-mid and mid-size businesses
It is said that 70% of acquisitions fail. This is not completely accurate; it is the integration of the two businesses that often fails. Delivering the value that was envisioned when the deal was put together is difficult and prone to failure.
Businesses that do not successfully integrate acquisitions waste the opportunity of value creation. With every subsequent acquisition, the pain of not integrating becomes greater, as the burden of multiple processes, tools and operational methods prevents growth.
Training is self-paced, but if you want to join a cohort, here is our schedule
Course Level
This is an intermediate level course.
Prerequisites
A basic understanding of the steps involved in acquiring a business:
- What is M&A Due Diligence and where it fits into the acquisition timeline
- Acquisition terminology such as "Deal Closing" or "Deal Team"
Certified Acquisition Integration Manager (CAIM™)
What is included?
- Online training to take you through the entire integration: from the reasons for acquiring, to the execution and delivery of the projects
- Templates and checklists to download, including lists of necessary departmental integration tasks
- Uses our unique integration approach specifically designed for small businesses, the SSIM™ (the Small business Simple Integration Method)
- Ask an expert after you have graduated. Get the answers you need for your integration from our experts at our Integration Mastermind sessions
Applicable for people in these teams
- Integration Management Office (IMO)
- Steering Committee
- Workstreams
- Employee Onboarding
- Communications
All lessons are self-paced, On Demand and compatible with all mobile devices.
Get immediate access
Get Recognized as an Expert
Demonstrate that you have the knowledge to be an acquisition integration manager
- Managers and colleagues recognition of your certification
- Gaining the knowledge and skills of acquisition integration increases your value to your employer
- Helps build your case for workplace compensation or promotion
Career Development
Transferable skills for your next career move
- Transfer your competence to future career contacts
- Helps you stand out from other applicants to future hiring managers
Digital Badges
Certified Acquisition Integration Manager (CAIM™) badges are Open Badges compliant
- Digitally verifiable
- Can be shared on social media and with your community
Renewable Certification
Intista certifications have a two-year lifespan
- Recertification demonstrates your experience and understanding of acquisition integrations
- Find out more about the recertification, here
What Lessons are in the CAIM™ training?
Training contains 10 lessons of self-paced on demand content, compatible with all mobile devices.
View topics in detail
Lesson 1: Getting off the Ground
We disclose important considerations before acquiring, discuss 6 myths about integrations, and differentiate between the priorities of the acquisition team and the integration team.
Lesson 2: Different Ways to Integrate
We look at four broad-category approaches to integrating an acquired small or mid-size business, along with the “Keep Separate” strategy (an approach where no integration takes place).
Lesson 3: The Integration Organization
We explore the teams that plan, manage and deliver the integration. We explain how this temporary organization is structured, within this hierarchy of teams. We describe the roles of the teams, the roles of members, and the qualifications/qualities of the ideal candidates for each role.
Lesson 4: Integration Objectives
Integration Objectives are the initiatives that define the emphasis, or focus areas, for the journey ahead. We learn how to identify those objectives, starting with the reasons for acquiring, formulating the Mission Statement for the journey ahead, and deriving two types of objectives: “Workstream” and “Company-Wide” objectives.
Lesson 5: Finance in Integrations
This lesson address the spectrum of needs for lower-mid and mid-size acquisition integrations: three types of cost estimation and the budgeting of your integrations based upon those costs, and the three types of synergy that can (and should) be pursued.
Lesson 6: Staff Retention after an Acquisition
We discuss the Cost of Losing Staff, and introduce the Staff Retention Toolbox. We suggest non-financial and financial incentives for retaining staff.
Lesson 7: Onboarding Acquired Staff
We discuss and review the Onboarding Team and explain how to onboard acquired staff. We outline how to plan a successful program and provide tips for its success.
Lesson 8: Preparing for Day 1
We proposed how to prepare for the acquisition announcement, known as "Day 1" by formulating a checklist of priorities to be addressed. We discuss the logistics of the announcement, and strategic topics to answer the questions that arise at kick-off and continue to come up.
Lesson 9: Communication During Integrations
We explain how communication is critical to the success of an integration. We show you how to identify and communicate with each of your audiences, and how to message to them.
Topics include how to prepare for the "Day 1" announcement, as well as how communication changes and must be sustained through challenging times.
Lesson 10: Creating Acquisition Integration Projects
We discuss how to create and run the hierarchy of projects that will merge together the operations, processes, and technologies of the businesses.
We explain how to combine the reasons for acquiring with Intista's templates, to create projects used to integrate the businesses together.
Integration Mastermind Sessions
Meet online monthly with integration experts and ask them any questions you may have.
Get the answers you need for your integration from our experts at Intista's Integration Mastermind sessions
Why you should become a Certified Acquisition Integration Manager
Get recognized as an expert
- Demonstrate to your colleagues that you have the knowledge to be an acquisition integration manager
Certification is an investment
- Training is reinforced with competency testing to improve comprehension
- Businesses invest in training programs that test and demonstrate learning
Professional credibility
- Certification provides confidence in qualification
- Businesses trust the judgement of a professional who holds a certification in a specific domain
Validation
- A certification is tangible proof that you have achieve a benchmark level of knowledge
- Gaining the knowledge and skills of acquisition integration increases your value to your employer
Career development
- Having a certification will help you when you are seeking a promotion or will help you stand out from other applicants to a hiring manager
Why businesses want Certified Integration Managers
Businesses that integrate acquisitions achieve the full value from the deal
- Purchasing a business does not deliver the full value of the deal: it comes from the integration of the two businesses
- A successful integration team delivers the value defined by the Deal Team
Create an In House acquisition integration team, using the knowledge of established experts
- Invest in your team to grow in-house expertise, which is transferred between successive acquisition integrations
Control the cost of getting external integration expertise
- Know the cost of the training and certification, up front
Improve the way that you approach and deliver integrations in the future
- If you already acquire and integrate, avoid the cost of inefficient methods in:
- staff retention
- faster onboarding
- improved productivity
- staff engagement
Trained employees are happier employees
- Certified employees perform faster, are more engaged, and have better work outcomes*
- Organizations that invest in employee training demonstrate that they have faith in that employee and morale improves
- Improved morale creates more engaged employees, which makes them more productive
*Global Knowledge's 2021 annual IT Skills and Salary Report found recruitment and retention as their leading problem, being addressed by dramatic increases in employee training. In the report, 80% of responders identify the benefits of certification include faster performance, higher engagement, and better work outcomes
Choose Your Delivery Method
Our training is online, specifically designed for this delivery method. Select how you'd like to study, below
Self-Paced
Study online at your own pace.
Suitable for students with
- An immediate need to complete the training and certification
- Limited time to study each week
Cohort Class
Students are organized into a study group (cohort) class.
Each week the cohort is assigned lessons to study online. A review meeting is held at the end of the week to discuss and ask questions about what they have learned with an instructor.
The cohort is a popular way of being held accountable for completing the training and certification, while still allowing self-paced study
Private Class
All students are from a single business, allowing acquisition-specific and confidential discussions to take place with your instructor.
The pace and schedule of studies are agreed before starting.
Live Remote and Classroom training delivery options are available
Single subscription, for Self-Paced or Cohort Study
The Value of Integration Expertise
- Acquisitions require significant investment. However, 70% of acquisitions fail to achieve the expected value
- Intista's CAIM program is the best value route for your business to get relevant, actionable integration expertise
Registration Fee Includes:
Prerequisites
- No prerequisite knowledge or advanced preparation is required to be successful with this course.
- Program Level: Intermediate
- Deliverables: QAS Self Study
Preferred Qualifications
- Hold an academic degree
- One or more professional designations (such as CPA, CFA, PMP, CIPD, CCMP, CVGA, CEPA, CMI or equivalents). Consideration is also made for professionals who have experience in the M&A, Transformation or Change Management industries.
The CAIM™ certification is an accrual of the individual short courses we offer
If you have purchased individually one of the courses, and want to upgrade to the certification, contact us for a credit
Considerations that leadership should have before acquiring, discuss 6 myths about integrations, and differentiate between the priorities of the acquisition team and the integration team
Four broad-category approaches to integrating an acquired small or mid-size business, along with the “Keep Separate” strategy
The teams that oversee, manage and deliver an acquisition integration; the members of these teams, their roles, qualifications and ideal qualities
Initiatives that define the focus areas, for the journey ahead: how to identify the objectives, and how these fit into the SSIM™ as a whole
Learn how to estimate and budget the finances of an acquisition integration: three types of cost estimation, budget submission, and three types of synergy
Staff retention should be a priority of smaller integrations. We discuss non-financial and financial incentives and introduce The Staff Retention Toolbox
Onboarding an entire acquired business is complex, emotional, and critical to the success of integrating acquired smaller businesses
The way that you announce and welcome new employees can be the difference between integration success and failure. Here we teach how to prepare and deliver the Day 1 announcement
Learn how to communicate to the different audiences for an integration, applying seven communication objectives
Walk through the process of turning integration objectives into workstream charters, and deriving the high level and details tasks.
Cancellations
Requests for refunds must be made in writing within 15 days of purchasing the course. No refunds will be granted after the qualified assessment has been completed.
For complaints or concerns, please contact [email protected]
Early 2025 Cohort Class details
This training and certification is 100% online, self-paced study, with weekly review meetings..
- The course contains 10 lessons
- Students will be asked to study between 1 and 3 lessons per week, which should take between 1.5 to 3.5 hours of self-paced learning
- Student should complete the assessment at the end of each lesson
Self-study should begin on, or around, January 10, 2025.
- On Fridays, students will meet for 45 minutes to review and discuss what they have learned in that week's lessons. Discussions will go into details on areas that the students have questions about. Meetings will be held:
- Kick Off: Friday January 10th, 10am EST/3pm GMT
- Welcome and kickoff
- Friday January 17th, 10am EST/3pm GMT, Week 1 review
- (Lesson 1: Getting off the Ground, Lesson 2: Different Ways to Integrate, & Lesson 3: The Integration Organization)
- Friday January 24th, 10am EST/3pm GMT, Week 2 review
- ( Lesson 4: Integration Objectives & Lesson 5: Finance in Integrations)
- Friday January 31st, 10am EST/3pm GMT, Week 3 review
- (Lesson 6: Staff Retention after an Acquisition & Lesson 7: Onboarding Acquired Staff)
- Friday February 7th, 10am EST/3pm GMT, Week 4 review
- (Lesson 8: Preparing for Day 1 & Lesson 9: Communication During Integrations)
- Friday February 14th, 10am EST/3pm GMT, Week 5 review and Final Assessment
- (Lesson 10: Creating Acquisition Integration Projects & the Final Assessment)
- Kick Off: Friday January 10th, 10am EST/3pm GMT
- After registering, you will receive a calendar invitation to the weekly review meetings
Chris Perfect
Intista's Sales Integration Checklist is a great tool to use when bringing two separate teams together, with all its supporting elements in place. There are other tools for merging sales teams, but this is the best there is for mid-size M&A integration. I recommend that you download and use this tool when planning next steps.
Rohit Kumra
As soon as M&A is done, everyone thinks that the job is over. Actually, the job starts there.
The CAIM is really helpful to understand the entire integration perspective, best practices, what works, what doesn't work, and the different types of integration.
David E Coit Jr
I thought the course was well-presented and informative, with real-world experiences and stories of actual integration assignments. Acquisition integration is important to value retention and creation. As such, the acquirer should use a skilled and well-trained interaction professional.
Chris Wise
I was really realizing the need to distinguish myself.
[The CAIM] was just so much value. It just hit so many value points for me, and what I was looking for. It was very well structured, very well thought out. It's very clearly communicated, and [gives] access to Steve and his knowledge, in the Masterminds.
Tony Mulvahil
Exceeded expectations. Substantial spreadsheets and checklists to support integration activity.
Joe McMorris
The CAIM allows us to do [the integration] in house... and still have complete control of the process
Jeff Provost
I've done a lot of strategy and execution work with companies looking to grow and was looking for a good framework to use to help get a tricky M&A business integration back on track after a year of challenges faced by the leadership team. Going through the CAIM program and getting access to the great tools and resources has helped me to get this integration on track and build the framework for the next acquisition in the coming year.
Winnie Lee
[Intista] made the platform very easy to follow. The way [it] organizes the content to align with the actual integration process, I think it was very easy to follow. It is a great product that is highly customizable and has the structure that is needed for anyone who [wants to] jump in on it at any time.
Rich Cone
The [course] exceeded my expectations. I think we were all 'experienced' coming into the class, but we all walked away with a much better understanding of the process which should help us collaborate better with corporate development on future integration work.
Jarvis Luu
I would really recommend [it for] people who are already in the field of M&A Integration, or for those who are interested in pivoting to this field to consider the course. There are a lot of fundamental learnings one can get from this course, [including] the structure, processes, and results of integration...”
Luis Acevedo
I loved it: the information, the way that everything is explained. The way that it flows all the way to the end. It is so well explained. It helps you concentrate and guide your process.
Ed Jurica
The class was comprehensive, and very practical. There's a lot of these that are theoretical and academic, and this is anything but that.
David Cusimano
It was very valuable. Saving me or an organization involved many times the cost of the class. There was lot of the practical advice that I wish I had had about 12 months ago with an integration that we did.
Andrew Swanscott
I used to worry about integration after signing the papers I'd think "What do I do now?". It was a really good program that helped me understand the things that I need to consider to get the most value out of my acquisitions, based upon my acquisition goals. There were a lot of things that I wasn't thinking about.
Mike Pijar
The [CAIM] course recognizes the reality of how to do an integration. There are some really good things that I didn't want to miss, so I listened to the slides 2 to 4 times.
Joel McGuire
A groundbreaking certification. This is a really unique course. There are other courses that have a chapter or two on integration, but nothing to this degree.
It's another way to get that competitive edge.
Ola Soderquist
We got lots of value from the CAIM, and I'd recommend it to anyone who needs to know how to integrate acquisitions.