DAY ONE
A Big-Four Accounting Firm Expands its Global Dominance with a Strategic Acquisition
Challenge
Five years after selling its large-scale technology consulting and outsourcing practice, this Big Four accounting firm’ s non-compete expired and it began increasing its focus on helping its clients solve business issues that impact their entire organization, rather than only working with individual departments. This meant the firm could now provide clients with enterprise-wide transformational improvements that included IT implementation and integration as well as change management and organizational structure, technology and process re-design. In 2008, it reached agreement to acquire a private firm with $10 million in annual revenue and a team of senior SAP implementation and integration experts with exceptional knowledge and experience in an industry the Big Four firm believed was on the verge of major growth.
Action
The firm’s Strategy Partner tapped me to create the Project Communication Plan and lead the development of key messaging and all communications supporting this deal and its impacts to internal stakeholders of both firms during the lead up to the close as well as on Day One and afterwards. These elements included: (1) the original white paper to the U.S. board requesting approval for the acquisition, along with multiple iterations modified post-approval and pre-acquisition for the firm’s various leadership constituencies; (2) an executive brief of strategic messaging and key talking points; (3) the U.S. CEO’s emails to the firm’s entire U.S. consulting team as well as to the existing in-house practice; (4) the initial announcement email from the target company CEO to all his employees; (5) the script guiding the Day One internal announcement call led by the target company’s CEO to his employees; (6) Day One leadership emails to various stakeholder groups, (7) an FAQ document for the incoming team and a comparable one for the firm’s existing practice, and (8) the script for the joint firm Day One webcast.
Impact
Day One went off without a hitch. The cascade of communications, timed for release down to the minute, occurred on schedule. While some new CEOs prefer to ad lib Day One communications to their team, this one elected to hew very closely to the script, which included his critical comments as well as supporting and welcoming statements by the Big Four’s Strategy Partner and the leader of the practice most impacted. On Day One + 1, I was assigned to lead the communications for the next acquisition deal.