Speed is of the essence when companies are being merged, according to a business integration expert.

Paul J Siegenthaler, founding partner at Focus On Change, told a breakfast seminar organised by senior level IT and finance search firm Axiom Executive that lack of speed was an important reason why between 50% and 80% of all mergers failed.

Siegenthaler said the day the news of the merger goes public, the companies “need to move very fast”.

“Staff will get worried [about their jobs] and think of themselves, and competitors will wake up, and provide a greater commercial threat,” he explained. 

Siegenthaler suggested companies take a number of actions to ensure they gained “good traction from day one”.

They included:

• sharing information
• organising a project team for the integration
• defining the joint vision, values and ways of working post-integration
• using a legal adviser so that everything was within both the letter and the spirit of the law

“A lot of this is admin stuff and time consuming, but you can save months by getting prepared in advance,” said Siegenthaler.