Resources: Building the Right Team

Building a high-performing, dedicated group to support your M&A approach is critical to success, whether you’re aiming to close two acquisitions a year or two every week.

At the outset, members of the C-suite – or even board directors – may be actively involved in identifying and executing on acquisition opportunities, but this approach does not often scale well over time. To build a scalable, repeatable process, you’ll need dedicated resources. The typical first hire is a team member with relevant transaction experience. Depending on the scale and velocity of your strategy, you may consider building out your business development (“BD”) group with additional team members – for example, in-house legal or finance resources – who can serve to drive documentation and diligence, accelerate pace and mitigate expenses.

Once the money is wired and the acquisition is closed, the integration process begins. Integration is the second chapter in a two-part story, and it can often mean the difference between creating or reducing equity value for the core business. We believe having the right integration leader is paramount to the success of the process. We recommend seeking an individual who is process oriented, able to manage through influence (versus ownership) and willing to take a hands-on, in-person approach with your acquired businesses. This integration lead will likely need to work and collaborate across functional teams; identify these team members early and clearly communicate requirements on their time.

Process: From Opportunity Identification to Integration

With leadership and relevant resources in place, your team can turn attention to developing a thoughtful and repeatable process to identify, execute and integrate acquisitions. Below are a few best practices that can help support success at each stage of the process.

Identify:

• Build a multi-channel sourcing strategy. A broad, diversified sourcing approach increases the likelihood of generating a strong pipeline of high-quality opportunities. Support from financial partners, intermediaries and industry contacts can complement and amplify the efforts of your internal team.
• ‍Create compelling, targeted pitch materials. You can improve the effectiveness of your sourcing strategy by developing pitch materials that resonate with sellers. What archetypes are you likely to encounter at potential targets? Materials that work with someone who is looking to use the transaction to fund their retirement will likely not be effective with an owner who wants to be part of the company’s future growth.

Execute:

• Align and standardize: To move opportunities efficiently through your funnel, we recommend investing time up front to standardize your materials to approve transactions. This step will help ensure that all involved parties – board directors, management team members, your BD organization – are aligned and able to evaluate potential transactions in a more timely and consistent manner.
• Effectively leverage third parties: Even with an established BD team, it’s likely you will need to leverage legal, accounting or other external resources to get an accurate picture of the target. Find a firm you like, discuss your strategy with them, and negotiate flat-rate commercial terms for pre-defined products. Based on our experience, they’ll appreciate the transparency, and it will mitigate the working capital impact on your core business.

Integrate:

• Establish a project management office (PMO): At Summit, we’ve found that rigorous process management is a hallmark of successful integrations. Led by the integration leader and staffed with representatives from functions across the core business, the PMO can help instill that rigor, meeting regularly to keep team members accountable to the integration plan. The PMO can streamline communication and facilitate “a single source of truth” for how the integration is progressing.
• Define and communicate the integration plan: Sellers will typically want to know exactly what will happen to their company and their team after the deal closes. A clearly defined approach to integration, including what will happen to whom and when, can help build buy-in and ensure sellers work in good faith with their new owners. We recommend aligning up front on an approach that includes what will happen on day one, one month in and even six months later.

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Systems: Invest to Add Efficiency

Consider investing in solutions to add efficiency and automation to your processes. In our experience, there are two mission-critical systems: (1) a scalable CRM to serve as a central repository for information your BD team gathers on target companies and (2) a secure platform to facilitate seamless, professional data sharing with those target companies once a letter of intent is signed.

Post-acquisition, a cloud-based project management tool should be leveraged to facilitate the integration process. Platforms like Asana, Monday.com or Smartsheet² can help ensure coordination, accountability and visibility across teams. We also recommend creating a KPI dashboard to monitor progress against each deal’s respective success metrics. Some project management tools have this functionality built in, or your team may choose to use Excel or PowerPoint. The format matters less than the rigor — what's important is applying a structured, data-driven approach to keep integration efforts focused on value creation.

Continuous Improvement: Learn from Every Acquisition

M&A shouldn’t be treated as a one-off effort — it’s a capability that improves with repetition and refinement. We believe the most effective acquisition platforms treat M&A as a core competency, building feedback loops that help teams get better with every deal.

We recommend conducting structured post-mortems with the senior leadership team 6–12 months after close to review performance against underwriting expectations. These sessions should dig into the root causes of any variances — positive or negative — and feed the lessons learned back into the company’s M&A playbook. In addition, we suggest surveying employees from both the acquired company and the acquirer 3–6 months post-close to capture qualitative feedback on the integration experience. This input can surface cultural or operational challenges that may not be immediately visible in financial results but are critical to long-term success. Over time, this discipline helps sharpen diligence, streamline integration and improve execution across the full M&A lifecycle.