Beyond the Deal

Beyond the Deal is a consultancy specialising in M&A and integration, helping businesses get more from their deals, more quickly

Our services help you make the most of a merger, acquisition or integration. They span the five areas below, and we can provide advisory, delivery and training support across them all.

Our approach, expertise and experience is strengthened by our independence. Our purpose is to offer the best advice and support based on what’s best for you and your business, not what’s best for us. Our clients agree, and value how we do our work as much as what we do.

Helping you MANAGE – helping you DELIVER – helping you LEARN.

• Manage the M&A Process

  

  Buying the right business is challenging enough, but integration is the key that unlocks the value of your deal. How well do your people, approach and processes unlock that value, deal after deal?

• Prepare for Integration

  

  Companies with a track record of successful integrations start their planning early, follow a consistent approach to govern the process and keep it focused.

• Conduct
  Integration

  

  M&A integration is the ultimate example of ‘replacing the engines in mid-flight’; the future of your business depends on getting integration right without risking today’s business.

• Accelerate Deal Benefits

  

  Recognising that a problem exists is a good start, but rapid diagnosis of root causes, options to address and decisive actions are necessary next steps. Poorly-performing acquisitions can be saved, but there is little room – or time – for error.

• Strengthen Capability

  

  Even the best can be better. Codifying your practices into accessible, usable business tools can help you distribute the knowledge and experience of acquisition and integration across the wider organisation.

Manage the M&A Process

Buying the right business is challenging enough, but integration is the key that unlocks the value of your deal. How well do your people, approach and processes unlock that value, deal after deal?

Service Overview

• Acquisition Strategy

  Helping you build, review or extend your strategy, establishing clear objectives and priorities, and an understanding of how you will achieve it.

• Target Assessment & Due Diligence

  Finding the right target to meet your objectives, exploring areas key to long-term delivery of deal and strategic goals: financial, strategic, commercial, capability, culture, leadership and more. An approach that truly tests your readiness to own, integrate and improve; not just your ability to buy.

• Synergy & Risk Modelling

  Connecting the dots between hard and soft, financial and strategic, to help ensure that deal benefits are accurate, realistic and achievable. More than you get from traditional Corporate Finance or M&A groups, we help you understand the real risks to the deal, and your business, the acquisition and integration will pose.

• M&A Advisory Board

  Bringing leading independent M&A practitioners together to help you sharpen your business case, road-test your thinking, and bring a fresh perspective to your acquisition, all in a confidential and supportive environment. For details of this exclusive service click here.

  

• Pipeline Management & Deal Co-ordination

  Taking the strain off of your executive team, ensuring that potential targets are identified, assessed and managed through a comprehensive and robust process to early rejection or deal closure. We take care of the process, allowing you to focus on the deal opportunities themselves.

Prepare for Integration

Companies with a track record of successful integrations start their planning early, follow a consistent approach to govern the process and keep it focused.

Service Overview

• Post-Close Business Model Design

  Helping you confirm the right shape of the post-close business across all key areas: structure, process, systems, locations, culture, leadership, finances, measures, branding and more.

• Organisational, Process and Systems Evaluation

  Helping you confirm the right shape of the post-close business across all key areas: structure, process, systems, locations, culture, leadership, finances, measures, branding and more.

• Integration Strategy, Planning & Risk Assessment

  Building the bridge between deal aspirations and integration/operational reality. A tailored approach exclusive to Beyond the Deal that ensures your integration accelerates acquisition goals while minimising risk and disruption to the business.

• Leadership & Cultural Assessment

  Using a tested approach and proprietary Beyond the Deal tools to understand cultural or leadership issues that may arise post-close, confirm those central to delivering deal benefits, and agree practical ways to address them on the ground.

• Communications & Engagement Planning

  Understanding key groups (inside and outside the businesses) whose support will be necessary post-close, and developing a strategy, teams, plans and tools to build their understanding, confidence and engagement in the process.

Conduct Integration

M&A integration is the ultimate example of ‘replacing the engines in mid-flight’; the future of your business depends on getting integration right without risking today’s business.

Service Overview

• Integration Setup & Launch

  Helping ensure the birth and critical first few weeks of the new combined business is smooth and positive. Establishing programme teams and governance, confirming roles and responsibilities; briefing and preparing leadership and employees for integration.

• Day 1 Planning & Execution Support

  Supporting one of the most important steps in successful mergers and acquisitions, one that – for good or bad – creates first impressions and sets the tone for the integration to come. More than just communications, we help ensure critical aspects related to business continuity, security and control are properly addressed.

• Programme Management & PMO Support

  Providing experienced resources to manage or support integration itself, from cost, benefit and risk management through cross-project co-ordination, resourcing, and more.

• Communications & Engagement Support

  Helping you create trust across the combined business: customers, suppliers and investors; using insights from these groups to address issues and help them through change. Keeping motivation and productivity high while minimising staff and customer loss.

• Specialist Functional Integration Support

  Specialist advice and resources in areas including HR, IT, Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, Sales and Marketing

Accelerate Deal Benefits

Recognising that a problem exists is a good start, but rapid diagnosis of root causes, options to address and decisive actions are necessary next steps. Poorly-performing acquisitions can be saved, but there is little room – or time – for error.

Service Overview

• Deal Performance Review

  Using tested approach and tools to provide a comprehensive, objective assessment of the long-term benefits of past acquisitions, highlighting underlying drivers for deal success or failure, and providing recommendations for further improvement, from every angle.

• Integration Healthcheck Reviews

  A structured, detailed investigation of your integration programme – and its impact on the business – using best practice and years of Beyond the Deal experience to quickly identify strengths, areas for improvement, hidden risks, and underlying causes. Provides specific, tangible recommendations for improvement, recovery, or relaunch.

• Integration Restructuring and Recovery

  Helping you restart integration programmes that may have stalled or run aground, fixing underlying issues to avoid similar issues in the future.

• Coaching and Steering Group Support

  Providing coaching for business and integration leaders facing new challenges post-close; providing non-executive advice to Steering Groups or other integration bodies over the course of integration.

• Business Restructuring & Turnaround

  Helping you understand and address both surface issues and the underlying drivers of underperforming or failing businesses, quickly and sustainably.

Strengthen Capability

Even the best can be better. Codifying your practices into accessible, usable business tools can help you distribute the knowledge and experience of acquisition and integration across the wider organisation.

Service Overview

• M&A/Integration Process & Capability Assessments

  Providing an objective, external view of your ability to successfully and efficiently deliver acquisitions and integration, informed by external best practice and your own strategic priorities.

• Establishment of In-House Teams & Communities

  Helping you build real or virtual teams within your business to support future acquisition and integration activities. Addressing key issues necessary to sustain them such as experience, incentives, and knowledge sharing.

• M&A/Integration Guides, Toolkits & Knowledge Mgmt.

  Developing, implementing, and supporting the rollout and use of processes, tools and templates for acquisition and integration, making use of a number of technology platforms and approaches. We can blend your own best practice with Beyond the Deal’s processes and tools, to help you ensure your in-house process is robust, useable, and widely adopted.

• Acquisition & Integration Training

  Providing executives and management a tailored event across one or all stages of the M&A and integration lifecycle. We can adapt best practice and your own experience, using interactive, business-case, or even role-playing formats to maximise learning. Sessions can be crafted around an upcoming deal to give your acquisition a head start.

• Team Learning Reviews, Personal Coaching

  Providing individuals or small teams an opportunity to share experience, resolve issues, and gain insight into a past or ongoing acquisition or integration.