Well-honed, from start to finish
Two factors make our corporate development team’s M&A capability distinctive: the breadth and depth of the collective knowledge of our people, and our close collaboration across all internal teams. We have developed a formalized M&A process that allows us to act on today’s wave of strategic priorities and deliver results across the four phases of the M&A life cycle—origination, transaction, integration and delivery.
Origination made strategic
We have a defined approach and clear criteria for how we evaluate target companies. Accenture’s M&A has three key objectives: 1) scaling our business in areas of opportunity, 2) deepening industry and functional expertise and 3) adding new skills and capabilities. We manage the origination process using a cloud-based pipeline and workflow management tool, which enables us to work with “one version of the truth” across the whole company.
Transaction made smooth
Our M&A framework is formalized end-to-end and supported by accountability from senior leadership and overall governance from our C-suite. As a result, we are disciplined about putting an offer on the table. We stand out in our speed and certainty to close, qualities that are attractive to sellers, founders and management. Key to our success has been our reputation as a good acquirer: Many companies we target are interested in becoming a part of Accenture and value our brand, channels, and ability to be good stewards for their people and clients.
Integration made seamless
We are obsessed with integration. Why? Because it is fundamental to realizing value. Acquisitions of services companies are about people, clients and relationships, so integration is a critical stage of the process. We have a deeply skilled strong post-merger integration team dedicated to helping companies assimilate into Accenture while preserving the unique characteristics that led us to acquire them in the first place. We aim to make the experience as positive as possible for the acquired workforce, to ensure we retain and attract talent.
Value made continuous
Initial integration is only the beginning: Maintaining momentum long-term is key to maximizing results. To do this, we look beyond the integration phase into ongoing operations. This includes holding sponsors accountable for the business cases they’ve provided, conducting regular status reporting to our Investment Committee for three years and monitoring overall status of the acquisition portfolio over time using a performance dashboard. To ensure we are continuously improving the way we handle all stages of the process, we emphasize knowledge sharing and deploy a portfolio of methods, tools and technologies to share learnings across the organization.
