Finance Monthly October 2019 Edition

15 www.finance-monthly.com FINANCE & BUSINESS - INTEGRATED M&A TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT 4.0 Pillar 1 - M&A Governance Structure. This pillar establishes the basic rules and conditions for an M&A project, since it defines the organisation, the committees, processes and responsibilities in the respective transaction. Reporting, decision- making and escalation matrixes must be defined in order to enable quick and clear management of the transaction. It is important to clearly communicate this to the entire project team. Cloud- based solutions offer efficient ways of documenting and distributing this information. Equally important is M&A Knowledge Management, as it governs the reuse of know-how, templates and tools and thus contributes significantly to the cost-effectiveness of the transaction. Finally, M&A Performance Management provides feedback on the success of past transactions and identifies potential improvements for future transactions. Pillar 2 - Scoping and Planning . In order to enable target-oriented control of transactions, it must be clearly defined at the outset which goals should be achieved by the respective transaction and in which framework conditions the transaction should be realised. The success of the transaction is dependent on the definition of a clear goal. This essential step should be given the highest attention from the initiation phase onwards. The SMART approach clarifies transaction objectives through its five criteria. In addition to the setting of the objectives, the timing of the transaction and the required resources must be determined. Starting with a general roadmap, a specification can be made by a detailed project plan in each phase of the project. In terms of integrated transaction management, all relevant teams (e.g. legal, tax) and stakeholders must be included in the planning in order to obtain a holistic view of the key topics and necessary tasks. Especially with mid-market and large-cap transactions, the corresponding ramp-up of the required team and infrastructure must also be precisely planned. S Specific Clear definition of the general objective of the transaction and the respective target criteria. Measurable Definition of goals such as sales, market share, EBIT, achievable multiplier, etc Attractive Establishment of incentive mechanisms for the entire project team (internally as well as externally) Realistic The objective of the transaction must be achievable on the market and targets must be available in principle Terminated Termination of the individual M&A phases M A R T