Top 5 Questions to Ask After an M&A for an Ops Leader

For many PE- and VC-backed SaaS companies, acquisition is not a one-time event, but the continued growth strategy.

Once the deal closes and the board cuts that check, leadership teams encounter the inevitable realization: combining companies operationally is much harder than acquiring them financially. This is especially true when it comes to merging Salesforce orgs, harmonizing RevOps processes, and integrating the broader tech stack.

Most executives assume the next step is implementation: migrate users, consolidate systems, merge data, standardize reporting. However, the experienced, smart leaders who’ve led multiple M&As before take a long, hard look at the end vision, then determine the right way to approach people, process, systems, data, and reporting.

Inexperienced teams that rush into an org merge without preparation usually spend more time, money, and energy fixing avoidable mistakes later (lucky for us, these companies often come back to us after attempting to go it alone internally for a few quarters.)

At OpFocus, we start every acquisition integration with a business solution design (BSD) that we call our Acquisition Integration Blueprint to ensure we’re not flying blind, and remind our eager stakeholders: “Fast is slow, and slow is fast.”

Below are the principles we use to guide our clients, and the questions we’ll ask you in the first few conversations.

• Do we know what the end vision is for your combined companies?

One of the biggest mistakes companies make during an acquisition integration effort is treating Salesforce as the strategy instead of the tool supporting the strategy.

Before discussing migration timelines or implementation partners, leadership teams should have crystal clarity on the the big picture:

• Why did we acquire this company? (What does the board and investors intend to achieve?)
• What operational outcomes are we trying to create?
• Are we optimizing for growth, efficiency, customer experience, or cost reduction? (Where is the operating leverage?)
• Who do we want to become as a combined business?

That last question matters more than most teams realize. Many acquisitions are initially justified as taking a competitor off the table, acquiring a complementary book of business, or finding talent quickly, but eventually, leadership has to answer the harder question: “Who do we want to be when we grow up?” This answer shapes your operational decisions across people, process, systems, data, and reporting. including:

• Team structure
• Customer journey
• Process design
• Systems architecture
• Reporting structure
• RevOps strategy
• Organizational ownership and governance

As Stephen Covey stated in the business classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: “Begin with the End in Mind.”

• Is internal due diligence discovery sufficient to determine integration complexity and readiness?

Some teams come to OpFocus and tell us, “we’ve already gathered requirements internally.” Great! That’s helpful and a good start. When we dig in, though, we find that this internally led discovery typically only scratches the surface.

There’s a difference between understanding your two businesses operationally, and understanding what’s required to merge multiple businesses together.

For example, a company may be able to easily offer documentation on:

• Company A’s systems
• Company B’s systems
• Estimated software spend
• High-level workflows

What we don’t typically get, but need, to understand the size and complexity of an org merge, is a few levels deeper:

• Data structure and migration complexity, such as your account list and account hierarchies
• Process differences, such as different GTM motions
• Integration dependencies for two different GTM tech stacks
• Reporting implications, be that internally in Salesforce or using a BI tool
• Organizational change management
• Future-state scalability

Experienced acquisition integration teams ask different questions, and the most valuable part of a BSD is uncovering issues that leadership hadn’t realized yet.

How much of our current state across all teams in both businesses do we actually know (and have documented)?

Most companies underestimate how difficult it is to document their existing business operations. Before engaging a Salesforce partner, you should have a realistic understanding of:

• Who uses Salesforce
• Why they use it
• Which systems are business critical
• What integrations exist and what data gets passed between systems
• Which processes are actually reflected in the system versus a motley of outside tools combined with tribal knowledge

In many acquisition integration projects, there might also be differing maturity between the acquiring and acquired companies, and varying degrees of documentation. Some of the common issues we encounter once we peel back the onion include:

• Rhe acquiring company knows very little about the acquired company’s processes
• RevOps leaders unintentionally exclude SMEs
• Executives assume they already know how the business operates
• Requirements gathering happens at too high of a level

A successful acquisition integration requires more than leadership assumptions. It requires input from the people who actually run the business day-to-day, at an operational level, and a business solution design is the best way for you to understand the size and complexity of the beast before making actual changes in the system.

• Have you consulted the right SMEs across your teams?

Many org merge projects quietly fail before implementation even starts because executives, RevOps leadership, or outside consultants are the ones defining the requirements doc. This means that you’re likely missing critical operational context.

The best acquisition integrations involve subject matter experts and key stakeholders across both acquiring and acquired organizations, including:

• Marketing
• Business Development
• Sales
• Customer Success
• Support
• Product and R&D teams
• Finance / Legal
• IT and Business Systems
• Revenue Operations (and Operations more broadly)

In each business area, you’ll want to tap your SMEs to understand workflows, data, exceptions, workarounds, and customer impact.

A BSD uncovers how the business actually operates, not how leadership assumes it operates.

• How much will this really cost?

This critical question usually comes from the CFO, and companies that come to us are chomping at the bit to get an answer.

Aside from the project at hand, leadership probably wants to know:

• What will our systems cost next year?
• Which tools or platforms are redundant?
• What can be consolidated?
• What’s the timeline to efficiency?
• How much time and effort will implementation require, across external consultants and internal team allocations?

Now, the challenge is that these answers are interconnected.

You cannot accurately estimate licensing costs, implementation timelines, integration complexity, and operational savings without first understanding the current state of both businesses. A BSD is what gets you a much better idea of complexity by business area and estimate. (Think you can get to an estimate with a handful of unpaid presale conversations? Read our last blog on Commonly Asked Questions on why that’s unlikely.)

Starting with a BSD means you have operational clarity to make informed financial decisions instead of bundles of broad assumptions.

Starting with a BSD Reduces Risk

Some teams think they’re comfortable moving forward with a broad T&M SOW and figuring things out later. However, these companies often find themselves asking for the floaties after jumping into the deep end of the pool, because they’re not nearly as prepared as they thought.

If you’re an executive who’s eager to show your board a successfully integrated business, recognize that acquisition integration is not only a technical project, but rather a full-scale operational transformation initiative.

The goal is not just to merge Salesforce orgs. The goal is to create a scalable, unified business.

Preparing for Success Starts Before Implementation

You can enable the most successful acquisition integrations by taking the time upfront to:

• Define objectives
• Involve SMEs across business units and business areas
• Inventory systems, tools, and users
• Document workflows
• Understand data dependencies
• Align leadership priorities
• Prepare for future acquisitions, not just the current one

That preparation creates faster implementations, cleaner integrations, and reduce the likelihood of expensive surprises later.

At OpFocus, our Business Solution Design process helps SaaS companies bring structure and clarity to acquisition integration projects before implementation begins.

If your organization is preparing for an org merge, roll up strategy, or Salesforce acquisition integration, explore the OpFocus’ acquisition integration services. You can also check out our next blog on how to take inventory of your businesses before an org merge.