Post-Merger Operating Model
Deal closed. How will the business run?
Integration plans combine structures, systems and targets. The synergy case depends on deciding, flow by flow, how the combined business takes in, routes, does, proves and improves its work.Only 55% of acquirers had program governance, 53% had synergy targets and 43% had a tracking process in place.PwC, M&A Integration Survey (2023)
Two operating models have to become one
Integration plans combine structures, systems and synergy targets. Underneath them sits a harder question: how will the combined business take in, route, do, prove and improve its work? Each company has its own answer, flow by flow, and the two answers rarely match.
The synergy case depends on choosing. Where the two companies run the same function differently, the combined business has to decide which way it will run, deliberately. Averaging the two, or defaulting to the acquirer’s, leaves the case without an operating basis.
Two ways to integrate.
What your team can do after training.
Foundation teaches the method on the Meridian case, with each area applying it to its own work. Practitioner Intensive applies it to one live transformation.
People from both companies take the Foundation Course together. They learn one language for the work before their teams are merged.
Outcome: The synergy case rests on decided operating choices. Learned through the Meridian case in Foundation; applied to one live transformation in the Practitioner Intensive.
Every place where one company’s finished work becomes the other’s intake is a seam no one owned before the deal.
When should operating-model integration start?
Before the integration plan fixes the structure. Once teams are combined, differences in how they run each function become friction rather than choices.
Who should take part?
Integration, finance and the leaders of each flow on both sides: the people who will otherwise read the combined model differently.
Where does ZBTOS teach this?
The Practitioner Intensive works one explicit live transformation with one cohort. An integration is a natural case. The Foundation Course gives the combined teams one way to read the work first.
