While most HR leaders tend to be highly competent on people and leadership aspects, they do not exude the same level of confidence when it comes to managing the same topics in post-merger integration scenario. Not just that, HR functions tend to shroud themselves with templates, checklists, and tasks so that they can easily avoid…

It is important to learn to maneuvering culture during M&A Integration. Cultural integration has been highlighted as one of the key reasons why many M&A integrations fail. Alongside insufficient or incorrect integration planning, executives have underscored culture as the biggest barrier for an integration. So, what is an M&A culture integration? Various industry experts have…

There are multiple reasons why acquisition of entrepreneurial companies fail. Close to 80% of all transactions involve acquiring a company that is much smaller than your organization. These acquisitions tend to be valued less than $200M and are usually conducted to acquire specialist skills, specialized product, technology, or a critical value- chain component. M&A as…

M&A integrations are complex and require specific roles. The difference between Integration Leader and Integration Management Office is fundamental to understand. The role of an M&A Integration leadership is a multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary role. The Integration leader should create a vision for acquisition, plan for cultural integration, create a go-to-strategy for new markets, realize value…

5 Proven Reasons why M&A Integration Teams should be a blend of internal and external resources The challenge for many organizations relates to the adequate skills left in their organizations, and they should focus on trying to have always a blend of internal and external resources in the M&A integration team. The current pandemic has…

How To Right Time Your M&A Employee Surveys Most M&A employee surveys fail during the process of integration. This failure takes place due to incorrect timing more than anything else, so, it is important to learn when is the right time for M&A employee surveys.   When is the right time to conduct an employee…

Mobilization is defined as the “the act of assembling and readying military troops and supplies for war” as per Wikipedia. This exercise is usually done in quick time and in a structured manner to achieve a high level of readiness to enter a war. Mobilization is a term that is also, commonly used in transformation…

✨ Our 1st digital innovation ebook has been published today ✨ ? It is one of the biggest milestones in our business in recent times. ? What started out as a journey of creating a single training on digital innovation strategy, converted into a significant effort of creating mass awareness on digital innovation. ? The…

? Digital Tax Virtual Session ? But what is digital tax? This is the question many businesses don’t have a good answer to or awareness about. Not just that, if these businesses have a digital revenue, they can get into trouble in the future with tax authorities. ? Join us to know more on the…

Is Your Business Prepared for Digital Reinvention?   Digital technology has changed the world. That is why digital business reinvention has become crucial. In this post, we will learn about the importance of digital transformation for businesses by the Yellow Pages story. Yellow Pages stopped printing physical copies from January 2019.  Two years after they…

  What do you think of when you hear someone emphasize the importance of business strategy?  A Three to Five year Plan? A cunning way to outsmart the competition and secure a bigger foothold in your target market? Perhaps it is the sequence of steps a business needs to take to overcome a particular problem?…

What many companies don’t realize is that Blockchain is a “revolutionary” technology. Businesses and executives still link Blockchain with bitcoin and crypto currency. The fact that block chain can provide huge competitive advantage to many businesses is still quite relatively unknown. Over the past couple of years, some companies have started experimenting with blockchain distributed…

It’s our pleasure to announce Anirvan Sen, CEO of Fifth Chrome as our esteemed speaker and Chairman for the 6th Annual Global Process Improvement & Operational Excellence Summit. Join us and industry experts to discuss ways to optimize your strategy, leveraging not only data but also people, technologies and processes to improve your company’s performance.…

The proliferation of digital technologies over the last three decades have turned traditional business models on their heads. Globalization coupled with technological innovation and mass consumerization has compelled organizations to rethink their digital strategy. Today, digital technologies touch virtually every aspect of our lives whether it’s our workplace, our homes, gyms, bars, restaurants or cafes…

Struggling with your operational excellence program? You seem to put all the required effort, but your continuous improvement program doesn’t seem to please the executive leadership team? Even worse, your fear is that with the market down-turn, your function being a base-cost center will probably be one of the first ones to take a hit…

  ? We tend to spend enormous amounts of time pondering over details of a solution and yet, we seem to short-change the need to understand details of the problems that we are trying to solve. ? “Thinking is one of the most important weapons in dealing with problems” – Nelson Mandela ? In this…

This is one question that I repeatedly get asked at all my M&A training courses. And I can understand why my trainees ask this question.The reality is that there is still a lot of ignorance and lack of awareness about M&A integrations. Many business leaders either overestimate their capabilities or hide their shortcomings by not…

Here are 10 encumbering reasons why private Blockchain is only getting limited traction in the corporate/business world: Keeping up with the rapidly changing technology landscape Aversion to crypto-currency and token-based solutions Disbelief in security structure and immutability of data Relevant and specific solution for their own business challenges Understanding of data protection mechanics in distributed…

As we draw close to the end of the year, here are our top 5 challenges of M&A Integration: Granularity and level of sufficiency of integration planning Cultural alignment Inadequate Executive leadership attention Fear of engaging hybrid teams (internal and external teams) to complement each other’s expertise Running Integration like an art with full understanding…

After years of research, experience and input from various practitioners across the globe, we have now created an assessment on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) readiness exclusively for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises. The assessment will provide a high-level overview on how ready and prepared a business is to acquire or merge with another business. The…

Change management in M&A integrations is a complex and widely defined subject. Practitioners use various interpretations of change management during an integration project. Here are a few examples of what types of changes are encountered during an M&A integration: Strategic changes Organization’s acquire other companies as part of a new strategy Organization changes: Type of…

Despite having a pivotal responsibility of managing human capital of an organization, HR leadership involvement in matters related to M&A remain quite limited. In many integrations, the involvement of HR is confined to combining payroll, harmonization of employee identity nomenclature, managing redundancy and retaining key employees. I maybe generalizing the components, but I want to…

“The devil is in the details” as the famous idiom goes, couldn’t more appropriate in the world of transformation and M&A integration projects. In fact, missing out crucial details can mean the difference between success and failure. Take the example of using capacity as a measure of readiness of a project team. Teams calculate project…

M&A is one of the complexities of modern day corporate world. At the outset, it is required to gain competitive advantage and, therefore, should be part of any serious-play arsenal. And yet, since it is fraught with pitfalls and contradictions all along the journey, many companies either have failed to implement a successful merger or…

LEAN Digital Metrics “It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.” ― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents Introduction This essay and…

Get high levels of efficiency in Procure to Pay process using LEAN Six Sigma methods in a 3-day workshop

Data Analytics based LEAN Six Sigma Improvements Data Analytics based LEAN Six Sigma Improvements approach is based on an innovative approach that combines the latest Data Analytics tools and LEAN Six Sigma programs. This is in collaboration with Connected-Insight’s data analytics platform. The approach significantly increases the benefit that can be derived from process improvement…

Process Governance: 5 tips to maximize Effectiveness In a large number of organizations, process governance remains ineffective and processes and functions are largely managed on personal interpretation or with a basic framework. This largely tenders the governance of an organization highly ineffective and often leads to cost overruns, fines and other legal issues. In addition, it leads to…

Top Governance Focus Areas One of the most important aspects that differentiate successfully run organizations or functions is governance. We in Fifth Chrome have used our life experiences to identify the top focus areas in governance for maximum effectiveness  

Is it time to shun vanity metrics in operational environment If you’ve ever worked in a shared services environment, you’re likely to be familiar with ‘vanity metrics’. Vanity metrics can make a company look great, but they add little actual business value to the decision making process apart from adorning fancy PowerPoint presentations or using…

5C returns after a successful trip to Africa Fifth Chrome (5C) team members Anirvan Sen and LV had embarked on a 10-day trip to Africa. The trip included a study of a sugarcane plantation project in Mozambique and business development trip in Kenya. In Mozambique, as the sugarcane plantation project is in its initial stage,…