From due diligence to integration: Navigating M&A across regions
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are often a major investment of time and resources, requiring careful deliberation and planning. This case study explores how we helped a private equity client with pre-acquisition due diligence and formulation of a post-acquisition roadmap and technological implementations. This enabled a successful acquisition and integration of seven business entities across Asia Pacific and Europe, and a smooth handover to an internal office once steady-state was achieved.
Service
Sector
In an era where companies need to disrupt themselves or be disrupted, organisations are increasingly pursuing M&A for growth through business transformation. ~ Harvard Business Review, 2024
The Challenge
Our private equity client planned to acquire seven logistics companies to achieve economies of scale and expand their footprint across Asia Pacific and Europe.
Prior to the acquisition, our client undertook a technology and process due diligence on each target. Post-acquisition, our client’s goal was to integrate the entities onto a single logistics platform to expand its network and improve its cost competitiveness. Hence, there was a need to implement an end-to-end technology architecture platform and process for all the entities. Additionally, we were tasked with measuring the outcomes of the acquisitions against predefined targets to ensure the strategic goals were met and to provide insights for future M&A initiatives.
The Solution
Lancia Consult established a CIO office and worked alongside the management team, their global investment bank partner, and their entity teams across all steps of the deal - ensuring an accurate assessment, smooth transition, and rapid extraction of the synergies with minimal business disruption.
- We undertook comprehensive technology and process due diligence on each target to understand the risks and opportunities before deal consummation.
- We formulated a holistic technology roadmap and architecture strategy to rapidly drive rapid post-acquisition benefits.
- We implemented our strategy at pace, resulting in centralised operations on a single CargoWise platform. Other platforms that were implemented included Salesforce, Hyperion, etc. We proceeded to run in an outsourced model before establishing and transitioning to an internal team once a steady state was achieved.
The Impact
We helped with the smooth acquisition and integration of 7 business entities with 500 employees across 10 countries. This required a comprehensive review to fully understand each target’s fit and potential based on its current technology stack and business processes. Our due diligence formed the basis of our private equity client’s valuation of the target and post-acquisition roadmap.
We also established a CIO office that had the roll up plans across core workstreams (Business, People, Process, Compliance, Technology) and a support model to facilitate future change requests. This 3-year business roadmap was developed to ensure realisation of acquisition benefits, such as lower freight rates, higher process efficiency, and network synergies.
Through the implementation of centralised platforms across the entities, there were significant gains in productivity and profitability. The post-merger entity is now well-positioned for global growth and success.
