A new playbook for today’s M&A deals

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have long served companies in pursuit of competitiveness. They've served in capturing economies of scale, securing supply chains, and building presence in adjacent industries or strategic end markets. The playbooks for these types of M&A deals are well understood. Accenture’s latest research into the evolution of M&A reveals, however, that these deal types are becoming eclipsed by ones primarily oriented toward growth.

Inorganic growth should be clearly targeted and focused on creating value. Accenture’s research of M&A approaches sheds light on five distinct pathways that companies pursue through their deals:

The builder pathway remains the most frequently used. However, we observed a sharp rise in ecosystem deals, in which acquiring companies target firms outside of their core business. The aim: gain access to customer-facing technologies and the ecosystems that support them.

Accenture research reveals an increased focus on technology. A decade ago, the desire to acquire innovative technology was the main motivation for fewer than one in four acquisitions. By 2020-21, that figure had risen to 36% of M&A deals. The increase is most visible in industries in which new technologies are changing how companies interact with and serve customers.

% of technology-driven deals as part of total deals in 2020-21, and their increase in prominence—as a multiplication—in the past ten years.

Ecosystem and platform deals have tremendous value potential, but their unique characteristics present unfamiliar challenges. For example, “string of pearls” deals are increasingly common. A series of smaller deals, often in rapid succession, is necessary to achieve the strategic goal.

We find these deals to have other distinguishing traits, too. Target companies are more likely to be privately held, which means they can be harder for outsiders to scrutinize. Those companies tend to have entrepreneurial cultures and may look to move at a faster pace. And they are at greater risk of assimilation, where a successful organizational culture can get lost as they integrate with the acquiring firm.

As more acquirers pursue M&A deals geared toward new growth, they simultaneously lack the expertise to assess a target’s capabilities and market potential, as well as the ability to realize the full value potential from their deals. Leveraging routine playbooks, many companies are struggling to realize the expected value of their M&A activities. In 2021, an Accenture study of 800 global M&A transactions found that just 27% resulted in both operating margin improvement and revenue growth.

Our research suggests that four behaviors are crucial to the success of today’s growth-focused deals.

1. Invest in an “always on” M&A capability

Small deals in rapid succession require companies to invest in an always-on M&A capability that allows them to handle and integrate more acquisitions in a shorter time-frame. Creating an always-on capability requires building an operating model specifically designed for M&A. The model should have a comprehensive M&A framework that offers the flexibility to combine different operating models, ways of working, cultures and teams.

2. Accelerate speed to value through technology

Technology is a cornerstone for any merger or acquisition. As a result, many organizations are turning to data analytics and cloud technologies to both smooth and speed dealmaking and integration. An Accenture study found that, in 80% of transactions that beat their sector averages, dealmakers placed significant emphasis on technology.

3. Consider an Agile integration approach to focus on collaboration and innovation

Traditional approaches to M&A integration tend to freeze innovation. Flexible, highly iterative, and with fact decision making as a key characteristic, an Agile integration method enables continuous innovation to take place during the integration. With activities tackled in short sprints, the approach enables teams to fail, learn and move forward at speed as necessary, also reducing risks by identifying issues early on.

4. Design organizational structures and roles to create the space for talent and ecosystems to flourish

Successful growth-focused deals prioritize structures and roles that allow their talent to flourish. Success can be found by seeking ways to protect and nurture the capabilities and brand power of acquired talent while simultaneously leveraging the breadth and scale of existing operations to catapult growth.

As more firms turn towards growth-oriented deals, relatively few are adapting their M&A playbooks. By mastering four key behaviors described in our report, firms can set themselves up to gain the full value potential from their deals.