Mergers and Acquisitions
No deal is risk free but the skilful delivery of a due diligence exercise will uncover all that needs to be known by an investor. Hitachi Consulting has a range of pre- and post-transaction due diligence approaches that can be blended to investors' needs. The pre-deal work can include Commercial, Technical, Operational and Management Team, along with 'Go-to-Market' analysis where required. Typical deal sizes range from the £3m to £40m range, although deals as small as £1m and as large as £120m have also been successfully completed. Hitachi Consulting also specialises in post deal integration from organisational, process, cultural and technology perspectives.
We have an extensive track record in a wide range of organisations in a variety of market sectors including Financial Services, Insurance, Technology, Telecommunications, and Outsourcing.
Mergers and Acquisitions includes the following areas of focus:
- Commercial Due Diligence spans market analysis and metrics for products and / or services offered. This includes lifting the covers on relevant competitor companies and their offerings; bespoke customer and prospect surveys; sales and marketing strategy including channels and prospective pipelines; culture; operations and a quick financial diagnostic where appropriate
- Technical Due Diligence assesses technical and functional product strengths; unique selling points; product scalability, robustness and defensibility against replication; development life cycle methodology; customer support; compliance with industry standards; integration capability; time to market and overall architecture
- Operational Due Diligence provides a detailed assessment of the operational processes and systems supporting the business. This examines process performance against lean, six sigma and maturity criteria, analysis of critical third party service providers, volumetrics, business continuity, approach to compliance and operational risk
- Management Team Due Diligence recognises that the success of an organisation is dependent on the effectiveness of the top team and how they perform together. Management Due Diligence evaluates senior individuals and the team using one-to-one career interviews and recognised psychometric tools including Observed Behavioural Analysis, Occupational Personality Quota and Belbin Team Analysis
- Go To Market Analysis concentrates on the Sales, Marketing and Distribution Channel approach of a business and checks the validity and robustness of the approach and projected sales pipelines. In this way the pre deal business case is challenged and tested. This exercise also provides recommendations on which market sectors to focus on with which propositions and through which channels
- Post Deal Integration draws on the core skills and experience of Hitachi Consulting in implementing operational best practice. The post deal period offers a golden opportunity to make change happen, operating models can be re-evaluated or tuned and initiatives such as Lean or Hitachi's Step Change can be introduced to ensure the delivery of the deal business case