Q. How do you integrate two
individual cultures?
You need to go into this with
an attitude of respecting the
acquired company’s culture.
It’s avoiding the attitude of,
‘We bought you; therefore, we
have the power.’
Ultimately you do, because
you made the investment and
performed the acquisition. But
we try not to present it with a
belief that just because we had
the financial ability to do this,
we also have the intellect to
solve all integration issues.
Integration issues can have
to do with how quickly you
relocate facilities, how do you
handle the people, how do you
approach customers, how
quickly do you try to merge
the pricing strategies. There
are unique things about their
business and their clients that
we have to be respectful of,
even if they don’t fit some
business roles that we might
apply to our clients and our
business.
In our particular case, with
the acquisition of Page One,
they are much better at processing quick-turn jobs than
we have been. They have the
ability to get the job estimated,
entered and billed within the
same day. In our culture,
which has been in the past to
work on much larger and
more complicated jobs, we
have taken much longer to get
the job started, billed and
completed than they did.
The ability to quick turn and
process digital jobs has been
of real value to us.
Q. What would you tell other
business leaders about
performing acquisitions?
Remind yourself that it
takes longer to do the deal
than you probably expected.
It takes longer to do the integration, and you have to
expect some surprises. You
also always have to be willing
to walk from the deals.
What I’ve seen that makes
most mergers fail is the idea
becomes so strong, even the
facts that occur during due
diligence become ignored
because someone is so anxious to do the deal, but it
shouldn’t have been done.
There are a lot more bad
deals than good deals that
have been done. We’ve only
made three, two good ones
and one that, for the most
part, disappointed our expectations.
When you need to walk
away from a deal, it can be
pretty hard to justify. That’s
why it’s so valuable to have
someone from outside the
organization take a look at it
who can say, ‘Without specific knowledge, without having sat in on the negotiations, this doesn’t seem right
to me.’
HOW TO REACH: The Dot Printer Inc., (949) 474-1100 or www.dotprinter.com
