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Who the client was
A medium sized manufacturer had recently purchased a similar company. I provided assistance in pre-merger planning. We had defined which areas would be integrated and organized teams to integrate quickly.
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Why they looked to us for help
About six months after the deal closed I fielded a call from the management team, to help them look at some issues. Apparently they had some concerns about the merger. Although they had minimized productivity problems during integration and were able to make changes quickly, they were worried about quality problems in their plants and a retention issue in the sales force. Finally, they were not sure if the lingering low-morale was typical for a post-merger environment, and what they should do to improve the situation. |
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What we did for them
We conducted interviews throughout the organization to separate fact from fiction, and symptom from cause. We found was that the quality problems mentioned above were directly traceable to some mistake in the rationalizing of manufacturing capacity. The problem had been fixed but the improvements had not shown up in the operating results as yet. Unlike the quality question, the retention problem was real and still needed to be addressed. The integration of sales forces had left an inappropriate reward system, and unless this was fixed they were going to continue to lose good people. We were able to identify specific inconsistencies for our client to fix. Lastly, the low-morale was typical for a company that had gone through the rapid changes they had. We showed them how the company would regain its earlier optimism, as the leadership began to develop a stronger identity for the merged organization. We also provided tools for them to do so. |
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