Having worked on over 60 acquisitions over the last ten years, the Excellere team has learned that the legal and financial demands of the transaction process leaves little time to discuss the partnership between the management team and Excellere.

In a recapitalization transaction, where the business owner is reinvesting a portion of his or her proceeds back into the business, creating post-closing synergies with Excellere is a critical component to ensuring future growth and success.

To facilitate this assimilation process, Excellere created the Value Creation Guidelines, a powerful tool that provides a framework for discussing important aspects to the future partnership that result in a more collaborative and productive post-closing relationship.

The Value Creation Guidelines provides management with a thorough view of Excellere’s post-closing Value Creation Process, and establishes a checklist of key post-closing initiatives.

A simple, yet important question to ask during strategic planning is, “What business are we in?” If the answer is too broad or narrow, it will limit the success of the platform and create ambiguity among customers, employees, and managers.

As an example, if newspapers had considered their business to be delivering information and advertising instead of producing newspapers, would they have invested more quickly into Internet strategies? In short, creating a business definition or concept statement is the backbone of any strategic plan.

This is just one component of the Excellere Strategic Planning Process, which guides management teams through a discussion that simultaneously increases possibilities while increasing focus and consensus. This process is typically a two-day session that includes key members of your team and is facilitated by an experienced strategy expert (Excellere Project Expert).

Given the additional resources required to integrate acquisitions and the attendant infrastructure needed to manage the aggressive growth, Excellere’s buy–and-build strategy requires thorough human resources planning. Beginning with a diagnostic process and ending with a “Human Capital Strategic Plan,” Excellere works with senior leadership to totally assess the organization’s existing human resource infrastructure. The Human Capital Strategic Plan provides a list of initiatives that improve performance management systems, organizational design, leadership succession, and talent development.

In addition to creating greater organic potential, these strategic initiatives position the Excellere platform company to successfully acquire and integrate acquisitions as you and your team aim to become “best-in-class” industry leaders.

Successfully integrating an acquisition or merger is a necessary core competency that requires determined effort and focus. Leaders today deal with very complex business environments, unique leadership and management skills, diverse corporate cultures, inconsistent operational processes, and business elements. These variables make aligning merging entities very difficult.

Excellere has formed an alliance with a renowned integration expert to create a comprehensive integration plan that captures the intricate steps needed for successful execution. The integration roadmap is a proven process that strengthens the combined company, creating an ever-more powerful platform for growth.

Along with our Project Expert who is focused on this competency, we work closely with the platform management team to transfer these capabilities to internal integration leaders for future acquisitions.

Management drives strategic creation, and the board provides guidance and assistance. The board must comprehend management’s strategy, impart historical experience and wisdom, ask questions, suggest changes, approve the plan, and then provide support and resources to execute on the strategy.

To create broader strategic vision, the board should recruit outside independent directors who have prior experience as a competitor, supplier, industry or functional operator, or as a customer in that business niche. Outside directors are critical, providing management teams with effective sounding boards on strategic and tactical issues. Additionally, these business professionals provide access to prospects, vendors, and other constituents.

If chosen thoughtfully, these outside directors provide insights that create significant strategic value. When combined with Excellere’s buy-and-build expertise, the board can be a strategic asset to management, increasing the probability of success.

By their nature, high-growth companies frequently find themselves trying to keep up with the growth of the business. As customer expectations rise, demand increases, and teams are spread thin, emerging companies often overlook opportunities to capture greater profitability with fewer assets.

To help companies identify opportunities to make more with less, Excellere created an Operational Effectiveness Audit (“OEA”). The OEA enables us to analyze areas such as receivables management, inventory policies, purchasing, warehouse, customer profitability, core processes, and sales force effectiveness, among others.

The OEA can be completed in less than two weeks and can provide management with opportunities to capture greater equity value and release dormant cash flow to support strategic hiring and attractive capital projects.