Post-acquisition integration
When two become one

Following the acquisition of a complementary retail business, our client asked us to lead the business integration programme. The scope covered all areas of the retail business, from buying to supplies to distribution to refitting the stores themselves.

Our challenge was to get this moving, and fast. We led the final stages of mobilisation and, working with the business leaders and their specialists, successfully delivered 64 of the 82 projects before transitioning the rest into business as usual as part of the Programme closedown.

Our impact:

• Agreed the business goals, the business case and the guiding principles with the Executive up front and maintained excellent communication with them throughout
• Developed immediate action plans to ensure the business remained fully operational during the integration
• Established a strong and empowered team of key business resources leading each workstream - they were the experts in their business, we were the experts on delivering the integration; each understood and respected this
• Kept rigorous control of all the projects and tracked the benefits, retaining commitment and involvement of key players along the way
• Resolved issues quickly when they arose - being prepared to get our hands dirty to make rapid progress

The business result:

• Successful integration of the two businesses to the agreed timescale
• Delivered an integration blueprint to enable the client to run future integrations themselves, the first of which happened a few months later