Interesting question. When I moved into my firm’s M&A practice a year ago, before moving over I read our firm developed M&A Integration Playbook, all 300+ pages. To be honest, a lot of it didn’t sink in because I didn’t have the practical experience to relate to. However, a year in and I and many of my colleagues treat this playbook as our go-to reference for when we are planning out a M&A integration engagement to support our client. The playbook is general and agnostic of industry and size to be relevant to all types of integration yet comprehensive enough to ensure we are not missing any steps as we plan out the work. It is broken down into 12 steps, starting with defining the operating model and strategy all the way to transitioning to BAU. It provides key activities, summarizes the reference materials and tools and templates. It does still require some customization for the specific integration characteristics, but because we support all industries and deal sizes we have to keep it at the corporate level.
