Agile M&A

The traditional M&A playbook is generally thought of as a set of best practices that guides an organization through the complexity of M&A. However, something we all know: every M&A deal is totally unique with the kind of gotchas capable of challenging even the most experienced professional.

A major problem is that M&A is very traditional in its approach. These days M&A is very much about business model change. Whether it’s about new technologies, channels to market or capabilities, the purpose of M&A today is very different to the past. Since the purpose of M&A has changed, the process of M&A must change too.

Jill Harrison and Steve Siler discuss their perspectives on technology trends in the M&A industry and how this technology is innovating deal practices.

Richard Kasperowski, a Harvard instructor and author, explores the characteristics and patterns of high-performing teams.

Ben de Haldevang and David Boyd, Founding Partners of the M&A advisory firm, Agile Gorilla, discuss their modern, agile approach to deal and integration management. Through agile principles, such as backlogs and iterative learning cycles, Ben and David enable industry practitioners to conduct more successful, sustainable and equitable mergers and acquisitions.

Nitin Kumar, a seasoned C-level operating executive and management consultant in the TMT sector, discusses how to create integration strategies better suited to modern business environments.

All aspects of the M&A lifecycle require employees to work in teams. The efficiency of these teams greatly influences the value extracted from the deal. There are two hundred and fifty characteristics of work teams that correlate to higher performance, but there are two primary ones that researchers have discovered lead to considerably higher, measurable performance.

DealRoom's CEO and Founder recently presented on Agile M&A at the 2019 Silicon Valley Scrum(mit)

Google's Principle of Corporate Development Integration discusses the company's modern approach to M&A, from due diligence to integration.

M&A professionals and stakeholders deserve a platform designed for their needs and specific pain points. While traditional CRM software can be useful to other industries, the high-pressure, complex and ever-changing nature of the M&A industry calls for something more advanced and targeted.

SAFe is a framework for businesses that focuses on navigating “transformation challenges” in ways that allow for improved quality, efficiency, productivity, and employee satisfaction. SAFe can be used to help integrate multiple legacy companies at once.

Accelerating your integration often comes down to early planning, process management, and the tool, or tools, used to make your process management more effective.

Agile project management methodologies are more often embraced by the IT and manufacturing sectors than by Corporate Development teams. Further helping Agile’s cause in these disciplines is that their own products are developed in an Agile-like manner. This does not mean, however, that Agile’s principles cannot be applied to Corporate Development and the world of M&A and its stakeholders.

Culture plays a critical role in deal speed and Agile methodologies can help. Moving away from a predetermined plan or chain of events and becoming more flexible, adaptive to change, and small-task oriented will help all stakeholders navigate the waters of M&A more effectively, saving both time and energy...and ultimately, money.

Our objective is to provide small, practical steps that can help executives as they work to introduce Agile into the workplace and disrupt the common Waterfall approach.

In any deal, whether buy-side or sell-side, or if it involves an investment bank, private equity firm, or corporate development business, there are a lot of necessary steps to take. There are many hands involved, confidential information shared, and hard decisions to make.

The process of due diligence is often classified as chaotic, stressful, and fast-paced and, historically, nothing drastic has been done to disrupt the way this procedure is approached. We now know, however, Agile methodologies for M&A practitioners have proven to improve diligence speed and quality.

It is predicted that in the next year we will see not only an increase in mergers and acquisitions, but also an increase in the size of these business deals. With more and larger deals taking place, organizations are becoming necessarily smarter about how to navigate the process of M&A.

M&A deals can overwhelm buyers & sellers, burying them in an avalanche of paper, repeat requests, & wait-time. However, with efficiency & effectiveness at its core, DealRoom provides a smarter approach to the complex practice of M&A.

There are 100s of documents to upload to a data room, a tracker to update with what’s been added, emails, follow-up emails, more uploads, updating a tracker again ect. The solution to this is to automate the workflow so management teams spend far less time answering requests and stay focused on running their business.

Agile M&A practices transform M&A into a simplified, efficient set of processes. Once a business adapts Agile M&A practices, the company can transform into an agile, data-driven enterprise without sacrificing quality or taking on additional risk.

Are you an “old school” M&A practitioner? Being “old school” means that maybe you are holding on to traditional practices, because they work for you. These methods are tried and true, and have been proven over the years. However, there are many new ways in which to approach the M&A process.

Agile M&A promises to identify and eliminate waste that otherwise contributes to poor customer service, lost business, higher business costs and lost employee productivity.

Typical project management tools are not efficient.

Agile M&A is a management system derived from Agile software development and Lean manufacturing

Agile seems to be a corporate buzzword.