Leading a post-merger integration
Innovative solutions and strategic guidance to ensure a successful post-merger integration
Client challenge
Our client, a Fortune 500 financial services and banking institution, was preparing to navigate a complex merger that would result in a top 30 national banking institute, by assets under management. Soon after the legal documents were signed, our client brought in Turnberry to help ensure a successful integration.
The goal of the Turnberry team was to support holistic organizational readiness for the transition by focusing on four key initiatives: operational readiness, employee readiness, customer readiness, and technological readiness
(see Figure 1).
Partnering with the client’s executive leadership team, Turnberry quickly identified opportunities to improve the chances of a successful integration journey. Among other gaps, the client lacked a centralized project roadmap, project teams were working in silos, and leadership had no way of objectively assessing the progress of the integration. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, there was a lack of clear and consistent merger-related communication, both from management to employees, and company to customers.
Our Solution
Turnberry’s support and recommendations could only go so far, given the scale and complexity of the initiative. We built on recommendations by enlisting the help of several key internal client stakeholders to create the Organizational Readiness Team (ORT). Some of our key contributions delivered through the ORT included:
- Conducting workshops to identify and map the full change impacts relating to the integration
- Assessing the readiness of each functional area based on a detailed questionnaire and checklist
- Consolidating disparate project plans into a single, centralized, and integrated plan
- Developing and executing a holistic change management plan
- Designing a Team Member Support Model to keep employees engaged, informed, and supported (see Figure 2)
- Providing leadership objective project and progress visibility through multi-source reports and dashboards
- Supporting go-live events through Command Center coverage and issue log management
“In the midst of a large and complex integration that was essentially doubling the size of our business, we knew we needed to supplement our team with the right resources who could balance both strategic and tactical execution needs. We were fortunate enough to secure extremely high caliber talent from Turnberry. One of the best parts was that the resources assigned to us served as “utility” players and were able to flex from creating strategic plans and executive presentations to data analysis and program management. Turnberry truly functioned as a natural extension of our team.” – Liza, SVP of process improvement, client
Results
- Successful and on-time go-live: Despite a difficult socioeconomic climate, there was very little milestone slippage and the go-live occurred as planned and on time.
- High employee retention: The success of the change management and communication plan minimized change resistance and prevented employee turnover; post-live survey revealed >75% positive employee experience.
- Minimal customer attrition: Both legacy banks involved in the merger experienced very little customer loss; additionally, the majority of the customer feedback was extremely positive.
- Limited post-live issues: Proactive change impact assessments and detailed requirement gathering sessions prevented unexpected issues during and after go-live.
- Insightful lessons-learned and integration playbook: Turnberry conducted an extensive lessons learned exercise and provided a customized and actionable Integration Playbook for the client to use for future mergers or complex projects.
