E&S has helped various clients develop and execute external growth strategies and initiatives.  Our goal is to help you achieve your strategic acquisition objectives, maximize your return and avoid the pitfalls that make most acquisitions fall significantly short of expectations.  We have capabilities in developing external growth strategies; candidate identification, profiling & selection; and post-merger integration. 

Acquisition Approach

We provide a comprehensive approach to help you, first and foremost, develop an acquisition strategy.  We then conduct research to identify, analyze, profile and select the best candidates.  Post-merger, we help determine how to maximize the value of the combined organization by fully leveraging employees’ ideas, customer insight and/or channel opportunities throughout the process.  Our approach and level of involvement varies and is highly customized based on each business' specific needs, existing processes, tools, readiness and resources.  Below are highlights of some of the acquisition work E&S has done with clients:

1. Define External Growth Strategy – This is an internal assessment of a business’ overall acquisition capabilities completed through individual management interviews.  Acquiring market information from both distribution channels and customers often augments this process.  The resultant report outlines the critical growth issues and opportunities and provides a foundation to develop external growth strategies.

2. Define Acquisition Criteria & Process – E&S will help identify the criteria to determine the relative attractiveness of potential acquisition candidates.  Where possible, we will leverage existing criteria and process.

3. Key Candidate Strategy – A significant part of the pre-acquisition process involves developing a key candidate strategy that defines how the client will pursue a candidate from pre-qualification to initial contact through due diligence.  E&S has extensive experience in designing processes to facilitate the development of account-specific plans.

4. Conduct Market & Candidate Research – We have conducted extensive external secondary and primary market research on potential markets and/or acquisition candidates with companies that are small or multi-national, private or public.

5. Project Management – Our extensive project management support capabilities allow managers to focus on more important tasks while, at the same time, participating in the process.  Project management activities have included, but are not necessarily limited to:

• Acquisition profiles & key candidate strategies

• Project charters including scope, team roles and expectations, and project timelines

• Manage activities associated with the due diligence process for acquisition candidates

• Meeting agendas & facilitation guides

• Facilitate and document meeting decisions/outcomes

• Develop preliminary senior management presentations

For more information, contact Bob Waddell @ 651.681.9066 or 1.800.603.8003