Virtas Partners was engaged by two mid-market apparel companies to help direct and manage the integration planning and execution process with focus on synergy realization and accelerated business process & systems integration.
Client Need
Our private company client was in the process of discussing a potential merger of equals with a regional competitor in the women apparel space. Virtas was engaged to jump start the integration planning process, instill thoughtful and pragmatic methodology, and ensure that a robust integration roadmap and detailed workplans were developed prior to Day 1 of the merger.
Tailored Solutions
- Identified and quantified synergy opportunities and stood up a synergy tracking process to help accelerate synergy realization
- Ramped up and deployed an integration management program and an IMO, including governance, meeting cadence, and templates & tools
- Spearheaded the workstream/functional planning process via charters, op models, milestones planning and detailed task-level integration planning
- Deployed a robust Business Process and Systems (BP&S) approach and procedures to facilitate and enable the migration of key processes and systems from one company (with the older technology) to the other (with the newer more automated technology stack)
- Spearheaded weekly meeting and reporting cadence to key stakeholders including executive team
- Developed Day 1 communications for the merger and provided a cultural integration framework to help bridge and harmonize the two companies’ cultures
Value to client
- Clear understanding of integration strategy and value creation opportunities
- Robust BP&S methodology to confirm business and IT requirements to migrate one company’s processes/systems onto the other’s
- Validation and realization of synergies
- Accelerated planning process to help realize synergies and be ready for Day 1
Capabilities
- Merger integration ‘lite’
- Synergies sizing, execution process knowledge, execution risk identification
- Communication & Cultural integration
- BP&S
- IT integration