Building an Effective Internal Communication Plan for M&A

I'm Kisam Patel and you're listening to M and A Science, where we talk with deal professionals and learn valuable lessons from their experience. This podcast focuses on stories, strategies, and what actually happened during M and A Deals. Hi. Today I'm here with Brianna Elkington. Brianna is a Program Manager at VSP Global. She oversees projects related to supplier management and purchasing programs at VSP and some M and A integration work. Previously, Brianna was lead Project Manager at Oracle, where she was responsible for the successful integration of acquired assets of roughly 10 acquisitions. Today we're going to talk about how to build an effective internal communication plan for M and A transactions. How are you doing today Brianna?

I'm doing great.

Can we start off with if you wouldn't mind briefly explaining your experience leading project management for MA integrations?

I spent a little over five years at Oracle leading integration efforts for about 10 acquisitions and currently I'm assisting on a few acquisition related projects in my role at vsp. However, those are a little more limited in scope, mostly from a procurement perspective. When I was at Oracle, I was responsible for all integration efforts that fell within the procure to pay space, which includes suppliers, so migrating supplier data and onboarding suppliers in preparation for transitioning accounts payable supplier contracts, so collecting and transitioning contracts over to the new entity. From a procurement and expense reporting standpoint, I manage transitioning acquired employees over to new procurement and expense processes, policies and tools. Accounts payable I was responsible for transitioning accounts payable from the acquisition company over to the new entity and ensuring proper data retention efforts had been completed. I also manage the travel space, so transitioning over travel agencies, tools and everything else related to travel booking for the company, meetings and events, corporate cards and mobile phones.

These are like a lot of important pieces of an integration project, especially when you're dealing with vendors and employees and their pay.

Yeah, it was a very big organization to kind of be the key contact for and also a lot of areas that are important to employees and have a lot of changes for employees.

So when it comes to preparing for for a communication plan, what are some of the things that you're doing ahead of time?

So I'll divide this question out into two as in developing a communication plan for M and a integration for the organization if you're starting from scratch and then how you would customize your communication plan and templates for your specific acquisition. So in creating a communication plan for your organization, I recommend that you create a generic communication plan and templates for your communications that you can use to save time and Ensure consistent messaging so that'll make sure that you don't forget messaging that you used on previous acquisitions for the next acquisition. Also think about what integration milestones are planned and happen in all acquisitions for your company. Especially what do employees need to know at each milestone AKA what's changing for them at this time? And also what isn't changing is important to communicate as well. Plan to communicate before and after each milestone and also plan to use multiple forms of communication so you can use email notifications, meetings, live or on demand trainings for employees, slack channels and intranet either managed by the acquired company or your own company. Acquired company leadership meetings and all hands meetings are good times to communicate information when everyone's already together. Then lastly, you can communicate through key trusted individuals at that acquired company. Next, you'll want to learn what communications acquired companies will be receiving from other teams within your organization organization which is really important to ensure that your communications are set at an appropriate cadence and are not repetitive. Ideally, you're going to have one person or team within your organization who's responsible for coordinating all of the internal communication. So if there's an internal communications team or maybe it's managed by your corp dev team, either way, it really helps when your messages from all the teams have a consistent look and feel and you're not overwhelming employees with too many inconsistent communications. With that in mind, you can also plan to combine your messaging with other lines of business where it makes sense to reduce an overload of communications to employees. For example, you could have a day one communication that goes to employees that has everything they need to know on day one for for all areas of the business. Also, creating a communication plan for M and A integration is definitely an iterative process. You're gonna wanna seek to improve your communication plan as you encounter areas where employees are consistently struggling or based on statistics like training attendance, surveys to employees, or even tracking clicks to links from email communications that you've sent. What you want to avoid doing is having a knee jerk reaction and changing your communication templates based on the feedback of one employee or even one particularly vocal acquisition. Make sure that you're using data and consistent results in making those changes because there's always going to be a handful of acquired company employees who maintain a negative outlook on the changes you're communicating to them no matter how you communicate them. Also, the overall vibe from an employee population can be positive or negative depending on the company's culture and also how the acquisition was communicated internally from the acquired company's management. That can really Affect whether it's a negative or positive vibe on everything that's happening. And lastly, topics of importance are going to vary a lot by acquisition. For example, companies that travel more have employees that have questions about your expense policies and process changes. Whereas if you have a company that has a really great mobile phone benefits that they give to employees, those employees are going to have lots of questions about what's happening to their mobile phones. So next I'll move into what to do before developing a communication plan for your individual M and A integration. So you'll take your templates and you're going to update them. And the first thing that I like to do is learn how they're doing things today so you can understand how integration changes will impact the employees at this particular acquisition and it will help you anticipate where differences could cause issues at specific integration milestones and need specific communication tactics. Also, set up discovery meetings with the acquired company as quickly as you can get in. Those are crucial to understanding their unique culture, processes and policies at the company and will help you build relationships with key individuals who can champion your changes and be that. Go to person within the acquired company to help answer questions and maintain a positive outlook on what's happening. And you'll take all of that information that you learned and customize your communication plan that you've prepared ahead of time and all of your templates based on what you learned and go from there.

These are some really good tips. You covered quite a bit, from making templates for communication to adjusting those based on the milestones in which you want to communicate during milestones. Also thinking about the platforms that you want to use to communicate your messages and then developing a leadership to drive the ownership of communication. And then iteration to make sure you're continuously improving your communication as you pursue the process and other deals. And then also the thing I really liked was taking that time to actually learn about the company and understand how this integration is going to impact them so you can tailor things on their needs as well. So one of the things you mentioned is when you come across the folks, which is inevitable, that have a very negative outlook about the whole transaction, how do you deal with them? Are you just isolating them or are you finding ways to engage them in different ways?

Having those key contacts within the acquired company and identifying those who have a more positive outlook can be key to kind of urging the acquisition to have a more positive outlook. So no one's going to listen to anyone from the company that's acquiring as much as someone within their Own company may. So a lot of messages can sometimes have a bigger impact if they come internally or from someone they trust. You want to start building trust with those employees that have concerns. So if you have someone who's particularly outspoken in a negative way asking questions at, say, a town hall or a training event, answer their questions. Or if you don't know the answer to the question, let that person know you don't know that you'll find out and then find an answer and get it to them. So you want to be the person who understands what's difficult about this transition and helps make it as less painful as it can possibly be.

That makes a lot of sense. So you're particularly putting more emphasis and focus on those that are like the sort of champions with a positive outlook. But then you're also not shying away from any of the questions from the folks that are throwing some maybe negative responses towards you.

Yeah, nothing sort of rubs a little more raw than if you kind of brush off their questions with positivity. That's not real. If they have a concern, recognize that they have a valid concern and go back and look into it because it shows that you're listening and that you recognize that the transition is difficult for them. Not everything is amazing and perfect about an acquisition. Even as much planning as you can do, there's always going to be pain points. And there's so much that changes for these employees. Something about it is going to be difficult for them.

How much does a communication plan depend on an organization's culture?

I'd say for communications to the employee population, maybe about 20 to 30%. Ideally, you want your templates to have everything you need for the most part, and then make unique aspects of the company's culture or differences that you discover, just tweak the verbiage to cover those. Then when you're having communications with your integration champions, that's going to vary a lot more. So I like to use more of a checklist of items that you need to accomplish or things that you need to share with them, and then open up a discussion on how best to accomplish that work.

Can we get into depth on the specific elements that make up a communication plan?

Sure. So I talked a little bit about that. Discovery beatings. I prefer to visit the acquired company in person if at all possible, but they can also be done over the phone. I also like to go in just after announcement from an integration standpoint, preferably before close. But if you can't make that happen immediately after close, and when you go in you're just learning how they run their business and who the key people are. You're not making any changes, especially before close. You're not making any recommendations. You're not even having an opinion on how they do things in their company. You're just listening. While you're listening, you are going to identify if there's any gaps in their spend authority and or signing authority there at the company that could cause issues and potentially expose your company to risk after close. Some examples of that would be if they don't have dual signature requirements on bank expenditures or if they have particularly relaxed signature authority procedures so employees in general can sign contracts on behalf of the company or if they are lacking division of power such as. So a lot of very small companies don't have the number of employees to have an appropriate division of power. In some of the finance spaces, for example, perhaps an employee has the ability to set up new suppliers in their system and also is the same person who issues payments to suppliers. That could be a potential issue or risk for your company at close. So with that information at close, you may want to put in place a policy. So you could put spend controls or policy changes that address these specific areas where you found gaps that you want to cover. And that would be kind of an official policy document that has all of the information that they need all in one place. You can build that out as a template and then adjust the threshold and finer details that can be customized based on what you learn for that specific acquisition. Next, you'll want to set up regular or weekly meetings with your key stakeholders. So in my past experiences I've been working on integrations from the procurement or the procure to pay standpoint. So I would be meeting with the individuals responsible for procurement and accounts payable at that company at the acquired company. So those would be my key people and I would meet with them regularly to kind of work through all of the action items that we have to do to accomplish the integration. Your communication plan is going to include training decks for live trainings. You'll want to highlight everything they need to know and customize the information for each acquisition. You may also want to build out a series of short on demand videos. So so these can be really helpful after your live training so employees can go back and revisit the information where they have questions or they don't remember something from the live training. And these are a little bit more difficult to customize quickly. So you'll want to keep them generic with kind of how to information divided by topics that it's very easy for them to find what they need. You're going to have your email communication templates so you'll have a whole array of communications at different milestones. You can use an HTML template. That way your entire company can all have communications that look and feel the same and are on brand with your company. And then you customize them for each communication. And then lastly you can also build out websites or online resources for employees so dive deeper into the information that they received in communications and training and make more information available on a specific topic. You'll want to consider where you host that information. So depending on access, it may need to be on the acquired company's intranet or once they move over at a further integration standpoint, then you can host it on your intranet or perhaps you have a shared document repository or website that you can can use.

It's interesting, I particularly found like the part around managing the spend differences because it seems like that would often be the friction point, especially when people all of a sudden have new policies and procedures and it may be different than what they're used to. But it seems like that was a pretty big emphasis that you tackle on in your communication plan.

Yeah, a lot of that's going to depend on how big of a risk and how concerned your company is with the risk that it represents. There's ways to kind of soften the blow where you start the conversation with here's what my company requires and here's what we need to get to. How do we make that happen? Where the change is going to require as little work as possible for your team to make those changes.

Yeah, I like how you phrase that. You made it very inclusive. Let's see. Let's jump to the next one. How do you most effectively distribute this communication throughout the entire company?

That's an interesting question. I like to use a combination of communication methods to ensure that you're reaching as many people as possible. And also that covers the different ways that people learn. So people learn best. Some people are visual, auditory or more hands on which could be a little more difficult when you're communicating to the entire employee base. You may have more hands on training for your key contacts and then it's a train the trainer type of method. Also, you'll want to find out how employees are used to receiving company wide information because that can vary a lot depending on the company culture and play into the company's culture and communication methods and even their terminology differences from your company heavily at the beginning of an integration, then you can teach employees about how communication is distributed at your company and slowly get them more accustomed to your standard communication methods and terminology. Some of the top communication methods that I've used in the past would be email communications to the entire employee base. Top down approach, where you use leadership meetings to then distribute the information down to their teams or even emails from top leadership at the acquired company out to the employee base. You can host a town hall or all hands meeting and assure that the information is shared there. Or you can host live online trainings via WebEx if you're not able to do it in person.

I like the point around utilizing these different mediums because people learn in different ways. I find that really true and it's good that you made a point to address that.

Yeah, I'm very much a visual person, which I think is unique. A lot of people like videos are more hands on. I want to read something and I want to find it by myself and read it. So I always take that into consideration because I know my approach is a little bit different than a lot of employees that I've asked that question of.

Right. So it's good you provide the different options. How do you best approach supplier onboarding and what challenges do you typically face there?

So this is a big topic for me and probably something I could do a whole other podcast on. As far as just supplier onboarding. I'll start with the challenges with supplier onboarding. So one supplier onboarding takes forever and requires a lot of file follow up to ensure it's completed timely. Also, a lot of companies don't have the cleanest supplier data or it can be difficult to pull the reporting that you need out of their financial systems. Also, suppliers don't always cooperate or even respond to communications from an entity or even an individual they're not familiar working with. And it's not a hot or very sexy topic as far as the integration goes. So people tend to kind of overlook it because it doesn't seem super important until it becomes a payment issue. And a supplier is threatening to shut down a key service that's needed for the business to continue working. And last issue that I've seen with supplier onboarding is ownership. It can be difficult to determine who the owner of that supplier relationship is since many suppliers are used by more than one business owner. So the supplier might get communicated to twice and be frustrated that they're getting the same message multiple times, or they don't receive any communication because everyone assumed someone else was reaching out to that supplier. So at a high Level here is the process that I recommend, and I'll preface this by kind of what I was talking about, an ownership. A lot of times there's the question of why not have one person or team responsible for the entire supplier onboarding process? And the problem that you run into there is you end up setting up suppliers that you don't need. And also those suppliers don't respond as easily to someone they're not familiar working with. So from a expediency standpoint, it's best for the business owner or the contact that the supplier works with on a regular basis to be the one who reaches out and lets them know that this change is happening and that they need to go through this supplier onboarding process in the first place. So with that in mind, the process is as follows. You'll want to get an export of the acquired company supplier information at close, and then you're going to take that list and you're going to compare it against your company's supplier database and identify shared suppliers versus new suppliers. And the best way to do that is to compare tax id because supplier names can be very difficult to ensure that you have the same supplier as their supplier. But you'll want to be careful with tax ID information that that is shared in a secure manner. And it's also limited to as few a number of employees as possible. You can always remove that information from a supplier list after you have done this comparison against your supplier database. From there, you'll have a list of new suppliers that need to be paid by your company's accounts, payable here in the near future, but are not currently in your supplier database. From there, you'll also want to narrow it down to which suppliers do you plan on continuing using going forward? So you don't want to waste time onboarding suppliers that are not going to be used as maybe the acquired company will be transitioning to one of your suppliers or maybe they won't and they need to get set up. So that's a conversation that the supplier owner or the department that manages that supplier relationship at the acquisition needs to get in touch with the corresponding department from your company, go through their suppliers and make a decision on which ones really need to be onboarded. That'll also keep your own supplier database as clean as possible. Then you're going to onboard suppliers through your company's supplier onboarding process, whatever that may be, and communication to the supplier on hey, we need to get you set up in our supplier database could either come from the individual they work with or if you're having it come from your company as like a standard email, make sure you copy that contact or ask them to follow up so they ensure the supplier knows it needs to be done. And then from there you're going to monitor, follow up and escalate as needed. Which is really kind of the hard part or the part where you really have to keep on top of everything over an extended period of time. You'll want to prioritize the strategic suppliers for the acquired company that provide services that are key to their business operations and those are the ones you want to push through as quickly as possible.

Do you ever have suppliers that after the acquisition news gets out that now the company's owned by larger company, that they all of a sudden they want to start increasing prices and terms change?

Yeah, definitely happens. Although a lot of them have contracts. So it ends up being more of an issue when you're transitioning from the acquired company's contract over to your company. If you have both have relationships with the same supplier and you want a contract to be integrated into one contract or you're migrating them over, you know, it really varies on what's in the contract terms that'll kind of drive what they can and can't do.

Gotcha. What if there was a vendor that didn't have a long term contract and all of a sudden they escalated their prices quadruple or more? How do you deal with that situation?

Well, hopefully your key suppliers are under contract, but if you did have that situation, if it's a key supplier, unfortunately you're going to kind of have to pay what they need you to pay and then start looking for a replacement that you can transition to.

Got to play hardball back possibly if.

You can, but I mean there's definitely other suppliers out there in a lot of situations, so that might be the leverage that you need.

What other challenges have you faced with large integrations and how have you overcome them?

So larger acquisitions usually have more mature processes and systems, which is good overall because usually they have better controls, larger groups that can handle these types of situations. But it can also make it a little more difficult to integrate the timing and complexities of transitioning away from systems where they're using a software versus a more manual system. Definitely takes a little more time and it's a little more difficult to handle that part of the integration. And then you also have the added work of collecting historical records out of those systems and terminating service with those systems suppliers. For a larger acquisition, you would need to host more trainings to cover the larger supplier base especially, they may not all be available. Some of them could be traveling or out on vacation. So you might need to host multiple dates and times to kind of COVID everyone so they all get a chance to attend your training. You want to be prepared for more questions because if there's more people, inevitably there's more questions, more varied questions. You will also likely have more key contacts to manage. So in my examples, being on the source to settle, procure to pay side, I had all those different areas that I covered that I listed at the beginning. And for a smaller acquisition, that might be one or two people on the finance team, but with a larger acquisition, then you're going to have an AP team, an expense team, a procurement team, maybe a procurement contracts team as well. And you'll have to meet with all of them. You'll have to navigate your relationships with each contact and then also their relationships with each other and kind of get to know their internal politics and how they interact with each other. Also, more legal entities for a larger acquisition usually require working around multiple time zones. And if they're international entities, you also have to navigate language differences and differences in government policies affecting the way that you make these transitions and some of the action items that you have to do.

So it sounds like a lot around coordination.

Yes.

Have you ever dealt with heavy resistance to do a deal? And if you have, how do you handle it?

Yes, absolutely. Sometimes it's one particularly difficult individual. So sometimes it's an overall negative outlook from the entire company. Neither one is super fun, but it's definitely very interesting. And I've had as many fabulous groups to work with as I've had difficult groups. So that's kind of how working on acquisitions is. You go in and you meet all these different people and you never quite know what you're going to get. So I like to think of it as a challenge when you go in. And I want to kind of win over the acquisition leadership and those key contacts as quickly as you can. So the message that comes down to the employee base from the leadership makes a huge impact. And sometimes it's already happened, they've already announced it internally. But if you can kind of coach and guide the leadership at the acquisition to be really positive when they're announcing changes and announcing the acquisition to the company, that's helpful. And then in working with those specific relationships, one on one, myself, I try to build myself as and be the person who helps them navigate integration issues. So everything's changing. They don't know what to do. They don't know how things are going to impact them or where to find information using the new tools and processes that they all of a sudden have to know. So be the person that helps them find the information that they need that helps solve their problems and act quickly to solve their problems. So that builds trust and makes it easier to get the things that you're asking for back in return. So it's kind of a trade where you both help each other through the integration. Then you're going to want to give the acquired company team as much of an opportunity as you can to determine how and when changes will occur and how they'll be communicated. So try to make them part of the integration team and part of the integration process. That being said, there's certain milestones and changes that are non negotiable, but try to be flexible wherever you can and make them, you know, get their advice and take it because they do know their company and how communication will go over best to the employees. Next. I think I touched on this a little bit earlier, but stay positive but real. You'll want to recognize and acknowledge when changes are difficult. Don't blow them off or pretend that they're not. Just explain why they're needed and understand that it's difficult. Maintain positivity with more of a we can work through this type of attitude rather than there is no problem to begin with. So yes, it's difficult, but we can do it. We can work through this. We'll find a solution and I'm here to help is the attitude that I like to keep throughout the acquisition. Even if you have difficult individuals or someone who's just struggling with a particular issue. Also, I like to always think what's in the best interest of the combined company. So. So it's no longer about your company and their company. You're combining. So you're one combined company and what is best for the entire entity. So use that to guide your decision making in terms of an issue. Do you push back on the acquired company or do you push back on your own company in determining appropriate solution and who needs to bend a little bit? As the integration lead, you're often a facilitator between the acquired company and your own company. So. So you represent the acquired company's interests and how they feel transitioning into your company and you help navigate the waters of their new company that they now belong to. And then you also represent your company's interests with the acquired company and help prioritize all the requests that they're getting possibly from your team and ensure that deliverables are met, then worst case scenario, if nothing that I just said works, you can escalate with the appropriate person. If it's someone on their team, you could escalate management at the acquired company or escalate to your corp dev team, whoever is responsible for the acquisition as a whole. Or you can get creative with backup solutions. If you lose a key employee or just completely lose their cooperation, you could bring in a contractor, you could get access to their systems and then take over pieces of their process using internal resources. There's a lot of things that you can do. They're a lot more difficult. It's definitely best to win over the acquisition and find a way to work together is much preferable.

These are some great tips and I really like your view about being flexible and even empathetic with that company that you're integrating.

Yeah, it's, it's never easy. They, they have all this integration stuff that they're acquired to be a part of and integration deliverables and new systems to learn and new processes that they have to follow because now they're policy and they didn't know that it was policy or they, they have to read through it. And then they also have the job that they were doing before the acquisition happened. So it's a little bit different than being hired as a brand new employee. Right. You have some leeway, you fill out all your forms, but you don't really have any job. You have a whole supportive team that helps you. These guys don't. They have a job that they had to do and they all have to learn all the processes together. They don't have anyone within their existing group that has the answers.

This causes frustration, confusion and headaches.

Yeah, definitely.

What often goes wrong, suppliers don't get.

Onboarded and then they don't get paid. So you're scrambling to onboard them and pay them before the supplier shuts off service. That's a big issue. Employees may be not following processes or policies because they either didn't get the correct communications and you weren't clear, or they didn't listen to the communications. What else? There's just a lot of different things that can go wrong and it's very different with each acquisition. So a lot of times it's. Their process is so different from our process that we don't even have a process to migrate them to. So then you're creating a brand new solution to an area of the business that you didn't have before. Like maybe you didn't have a department that covers a particular process of the acquired company. That can be difficult.

The biggest destruction of value comes from key people leaving. What causes key people leave?

So on my side, being in the finance space, those are areas where companies a lot of times, whether it's quickly or years later, tend to consolidate. So some of the employees might be concerned that their jobs are going away or they might get a transitional offer and they'd prefer to jump ship and go find themselves a full time offer somewhere else. So you want to make the acquisition as easy as you can for them. Be very clear in your communication. So this whole podcast is about communication, right? Communication is a huge issue that can cause employees to leave and done well is something that will keep them on board, at least for longer. So you can communicate. Give this company a shot. So maybe you didn't plan to work for the company that just acquired your company, but you might like it. So give it a shot. See if you like it. You can highlight all of the opportunities if your company is larger than the company that you that you've acquired. You can point out all of the opportunities and other areas of the business where they might expand their career experience if they want to. There's a lot of benefits to two employees sticking through an integration so they learn about an integration that looks great on your resume just having lived through an integration.

So I'm convinced 90% of problems are related to communication or accountability.

Absolutely.

What have you done to help bridge those gaps or overcome some of those specific communication problems when you see them?

So in the moment, scramble to get the right communication out if it didn't go out at the time that it should have, get it out as soon as you can and then look to update your templates and your project plans to have a little more forward thinking the next time around so you don't run into the same issue.

Give me an example. Give me something like here's a problem I found. And you know, the often thing is people just don't talk to each other and how you were able to overcome it.

Okay, so I'll talk a little bit more about supplier onboarding because as I've mentioned, supplier nonpayment can cause a lot of issues. And so supplier onboarding doesn't seem like it's important or big deal. It seems like you have a ton of time until you sort of forget about it while you're working on other integration items or your regular job. And then all of a sudden you didn't get the supplier onboarded. So one of the things that in one of my past experiences was we had a manual process for onboarding suppliers and there wasn't enough accountability. So we would send out the list and we would give information to the departments on our end. We would say, okay, get your supplier set up, review this list, determine who needs to get set up, work with the acquired company, contact who they should have already been working with on other integration items and set up your suppliers. And then suppliers just weren't getting set up. We moved to a method where we were assigning each supplier to an individual and we built out a database and a workflow. So basically an in house software solution that kind of helped route those and send. It sent automated messages to help remind people of the tasks that they needed to do and when they needed to do them.

That helped probably a lot.

Yeah, it did. It really made things a lot easier and the different stakeholders really liked the system that we built for them.

So that's interesting. You sort of tackled it with kind of the process perspective and created a way that channel things in and made it easier for everyone.

Yeah, because the communication itself was not enough. It was too long and it was too, too far in advance. Right. So the information would get lost later on. So we broke it up into using some project management type software built out and then using the software to trigger smaller, shorter communications that were sent at the time that they were needed. So you do this task now, which is much easier for people to remember an action on.

Exactly. I like it. What advice do you have for me on my next acquisition so I don't screw it up?

You know, really have a good communication plan built out and then be ready for it to go wrong and adjust. So yeah, I think the biggest thing is just keeping that attitude of being empathetic and ready to solve problems when they come up and stay, staying positive with the acquisition.

I'm hearing be agile.

Yes, you are hearing that.

Brianna, what's the craziest thing you've seen? M and A.

Some of the craziest ones I probably can't go into too many details would be sort of things you see on expense reports or travel policies that are super unique to a particular acquired company.

I want to hear an example.

Okay, so we won't name the company.

But I just want an example.

Yeah, One of them was a very specific instance where there was no other form of travel in an area. So they were chartering private helicopters to get back from customer jobs.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So instead of renting a car, they just took a shopper.

Yeah. So things that were kind of explicitly, and I don't even know if that was explicitly laid out in your standard expense policy. Travel expense policy will say, you know, don't book private, don't charter private planes, or you can't travel first class unless it's over a certain number of hours or you have a specific level of manager, then you can book it. So things that would kind of go against those types of policies, but there's no way around them for a very, very specific instance for travel to a customer in a very unique situation.

What was the craziest expense item you've seen?

I saw someone expense their dog sitting while they were traveling.

That's not legit.

Yeah, I guess I wouldn't have thought to have done that. And I'm pretty sure a lot of companies expense policies would prefer you don't do that.

I guess childcare would be next right there.

Yeah.

Hey, great having you Brianna. I enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for walking me through creating a communication plan for M and A.

Thank you for having me. It was great.

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