Synchronizing the Deal Team and Integration Team for Better Outcomes

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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.

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Follow M and A Science. I'm your host Kisan Patel, Founder and CEO at Deal Room and Chief Scientist at M and A Science. Joining me today is Russ Hartz, Vice President, Corporate Development at Ansys.

Also joining me today is Carrie Pugh.

Director of Corporate Integrations, also at Ansys.

Not familiar with Ansys, the world's leader.

In engineering simulation software traded on NASDAQ under anss. Today we're going to talk about how to synchronize the deal team and integration team for better outcomes. Russ.

Carrie, thanks for joining me today.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, excited to be here live in Charleston.

Live.

I don't know how you got this hooked up, but we got a penthouse suite we're recording out of. So great to be here.

Great to have you.

Well, let's kick off with the background.

We've done this before. It's good to see you in person for the first time and thrilled to be back doing another podcast with you. It's even better having my partner in crime here, Carrie Pugh, with me. Quick background on me, as you said, vice President of Corporate Development at Ansys. What does that mean? I run our M and A practice at Ansys. I've been there for the last seven years. As part of my role, I also oversee the integration function. I'll let Carrie introduce how she plays into that function. Before Ansys, I had a very similar job at SAP, the world leader in ERP software, the German based company that I think most listeners are probably familiar with. Prior to that time, I was an M and A attorney for about seven years at a large law firm. So now recovering attorney, had a lot of different roles in M and A. And 2024 is actually my silver anniversary of being focused on nothing but ma. 25 years and as an M and A professional.

Wow. Congrats, man.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks. I never would have guessed, but it's been a great run.

I'm more of the poster child for change. I've done a lot of different things. I started my career in hr, ventured into project management, became an expert in contingent labor, dabbled in contracts and compliance, and somehow stumbled down the road of M and A. I started at Cisco. That's where my integration practice began. It was a great place to start out, very foundational. They're definitely a best practice leader when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. I did find that I wanted to have more of an intimate environment with regard to integration. So my next adventure was to work for a company called Avalara. I was able to establish their first integration management office there and really enjoyed that intimacy in the smaller environment that eventually led me to Ansys. And I'm leading their integration practice. It feels like home. So I'm excited to talk through some of the things we're doing there.

Both of you have pretty significant prior backgrounds in the related role, and especially I want to be appreciative of taking time. I know you got a pretty big transaction going on now.

Yes, we're in the middle of being acquired ourselves by a company called Synopsys. They are a leader in what's called eda, Electronic Design Automation, which is primarily relevant to the semiconductor industry. So exciting transaction announced at the beginning of the year. It's interesting being on the other side of the table. Carrie and I both spent most of our career being the acquiring party, being the buyer, and now we're seeing it from a different perspective.

Turn that into a podcast series. I think that's happened enough times, folks. We can add it on here.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Eventually.

We had a good run. I know the big theme is around the partnership and how you've worked together and really built a model that delivers better outcomes. There's always a key theme of integration should be involved early. Can we talk about that in terms of what does that actually mean and why?

It took me a little while in my career to recognize the importance of integration planning at the outset, but as you progress in your career and you see the outcomes of the deals that you've worked on as a deal execution person, you quickly realize that all the magic really happens during integration. The success or the failure of a transaction happens during the integration. And so the more you can do up front to get that right, the earlier you can plan, you're really setting the transaction up for success. We have developed a model at Ansys that was very successful in my prior time at SAP, which I think is the right model for the partnership between the execution and the integration function. There's three aspects to it. There is organizational structure, there is staffing around how you do your integrations and manage integrations, and then there's your processes. We get all three of those things right. But the key is integration is infused throughout the entire deal process across all of those three vectors.

Do you agree with that? Are these three pillars we're building off of organizational structure, staffing and processes?

Yeah, they're critical. I think there's another layer to it as well. When you're transitioning, it can be a stressful time for everyone, especially the company that's coming in the target company. The earlier you can build those comprehensive integration plans, the more confident they're going to feel there's also the element of having a well informed team. And this is both internally for us and even for them as well because we can start to communicate earlier and they have a level of comfort with some of the integration folks. That's the same faces that they see during diligence that they'll see post integration. The other element of that is having a really smooth handoff. The more connected that the diligence side is to the integration side, that higher level of communication, the easier it will be. And it's not just the PowerPoint presentations and the deal rationale. It's the little things you pick up on that aren't written anywhere. It's that higher level of communication elements that come out during that diligence practice that we're able to then incorporate into our integration plans.

So you added communications and almost psychology of all the change and everything. And then also the handoff specifically around diligence to integration. We're going to touch on all these things.

Okay.

Yeah.

But I still can't believe there's so many people I talk to and they're still pretty stubborn. They don't put a lot of effort to integration until it's really close to close or after close. I like the fact you've had that experience when you don't do that. So if we were to define, I'll use the sales buzzword, positive business outcomes. If you actually put this effort in, which is starting to get integration people involved early, what are those things that need to get thought about or planned? What is that ultimately? Net result?

It's meeting the metrics that you've set out for the transaction, the hard objective goals that you've got for the transaction. Some people look at just those objectives as the plan. But the plan is how are you going to reach those objectives? How are you going to operationalize meeting those objectives? That's got to be done up front. To hit the goals, you've got to hit the ground running. And that starts with a solid plan and that's got to be done early.

Increase your likeliness to actually hit your goals.

Our hit rate at Ansys and I'm curious to hear Carrie compare this to her prior stops in her career. But it is remarkably consistent how we hit those metrics on the timeframe that we've set out for hitting the metrics. I don't know what industry standard is. We hear the 50% ish of M& A deals are actually success. And I assume that is in some way relative to the business goals that are set out for those deals. Let's take between 50 and 70% as the industry standards. We're in the high 90s across for us at least my time at seven years at ANSYS, nearly 30 deals, that is astounding. And so it's not luck. There's gotta be something about the way we do it, the way we approach it, and how we put our model together.

With the integration team being so involved early, that deal thesis also tends to sink in a little bit more. We understand the intent and the purpose behind the acquisition. And because we're part of that early on, it really does bleed through into the integration planning itself. But there's also that go back to that people element too and the change management. We start thinking about that really early because we have folks that are really invested because they're going to be part of diligence and they're part of integration. So we're already documenting assumptions and capturing a lot of those assumptions that we need to build into those plans early, very early in the process. And it makes a huge, huge impact.

Walk me through.

We probably should take a step back for your listeners. I mentioned three elements to our model Org structure, staffing and process. So we probably should level set a little bit more because it'll make things that we'll say as the discussion continues a little more concrete. Org structure. Our org structure around the management of integration function is based on a model where the integration team led by Carrie, the integration management Office as we call it, reports into me as the M and A leader who also has responsibility for the deal execution team. So there's one M&A team and it includes deal execution people and imo. And so when you talk about how do you guys communicate, it is seamless. We're part of the same team. We're meeting on a weekly basis formally and our informal we're on the same teams chat. We're constantly in contact so it's almost like we don't even think about how are we going to communicate, how are we going to coordinate. We're just doing it in real time, all the time, because we're one team. That's the org model that I refer to. The staffing is something that Carrie just referred to, which is our entire organization bought into M and A as a tool to achieve our growth strategy years ago when our current CEO took over. As a result, all the key functions across the organization said if M and A is going to be key pillar in achieving our strategy, we better staff up to be able to meet the Volume of M and A that we're going to do and that senior management is behind all of the major functions, have people dedicated to M and A activity, be it obviously the product team, sales team, all the back office functions, hr, it, legal, and most of those people manage the due diligence effort for their function as well as they stay with the integration post deal. They're all responsible to some extent at least for the integration planning for their function. And then many of them do not pass that plan off to a colleague. They themselves stay with the transaction through the integration period. You talk about seamlessness in coordinating the effort from the execution phase to the integration phase. You've got the same people staffed across all of those phases, across all the functions. So it really is seamless, the process. I think we can get into a little bit more as we talk. There's a lot of different elements to our process and how integration is infused in the process. I think that will come out more in the discussion, but that at least covers the org model and the staffing piece.

So one team and then you basically staff this so that you have the continuity of people to be able to stick around for the whole entire deal through the integration.

The two things that brought me to Ansys number one was the fact that the integration team and the deal team are all under one leader. In my past positions, it's always been two separate individuals and they're focused on different objectives and it's really hard to communicate and stay connected with those teams. We're connected because it's staff meetings and there's just a lot of camaraderie between the folks that report to me and with me reporting to Russ, his direct reports as well. That made a huge difference just in staying informed. But the other component to that is having dedicated resources. I've also been in prior positions where there are individuals that come in and out as far as that integration life cycle. And it's very confusing. It takes a lot of time to get certain people up to speed if they. They haven't done M and A previously. So having that dedicated individual in the functions, it really just makes a huge impact on the success of the integration.

That's a dedicated resource to M and A in the function.

At least one. And many of these functions have multiple people dedicated to M and A.

How much volume and deal size do you need to.

Because that's A. Yeah, I know where you're going with this. We were averaging pre Covid and then when we. When the world settled again right after Covid when to call it six to eight months post Covid and the economy came back, we were averaging four to five deals a year. That's a lot for our company. I mean, yes, we're public, we're large, but we're $2 billion large, not $20 billion large like some of the tech behemoths. So that's a lot of volume. And the only way you get to be able to do that volume and do it effectively and efficiently is to have the resources to handle it. And we still, I think we can use more people, but we're lean and mean and we know what we're doing. We've got experienced people not only as part of the M and a team that reports to me, but across the company. People have done this either in a prior stop or have done it many times at Ansys. And so they know what they're doing and they're good at it.

I want to understand the actual partnership, the communication, the collaboration. But maybe a fun way would be to just make up an example deal and the timeline, just to get a sense of when's Carrie actually involved as we talk about integration involved early. What are you actually doing that early? Assuming some stuff might happen pre loi and then just as a deal continues through the next stage, where is that collaboration, communication effort?

I think let's segregate it as well. Because for our team that reports into rus, we do receive a little bit more information than possibly the rest of the integration team. So we're aware of things that are coming down the pike before even the team knows about it. But once there is an LOI signed, the entire team starts to receive more information about the upcoming deal and what the deal thesis is. And so we're kind of riding alongside with them just to understand some of the dynamics. Obviously, when our team comes together, Russ is able to share a little bit more with us as the integration leaders, so that we know in the future how we may need to pivot potentially or any pitfalls that really works to our advantage as far as the planning and getting ahead of potential risks or issues.

So pre loi, I'm just curious about this is it's kind of feel like the meat of the negotiation. We're coming up with a purchase price. We sort of have our thesis in place. You start getting a perspective on integration in terms of, you know, hey, I want to make sure we got clarity that this is what the integration cost is going to be in timelines or.

Does it not matter?

Is this so much of just, hey, we're trying to get a high level of some general terms that would make sense. I know we're trying to pay X multiplier and whatnot and that those real considerations on integration doesn't come after.

It's probably more after loi. There are some elements we may think about, but until we know that it's going to move forward, we don't invest a lot from an integration standpoint.

You asked when Carrie knows. Carrie knows about a potential deal usually within a couple of days after I know that we should even start talking to the company. So she and her team, the IMO know very early on when we talk about integration team. You got Carrie's team, which is the imo. They're responsible for project management and overseeing and guiding the entire integration team and project. And then you've got the folks across the functions that will also be instrumental in the integration. We call that team the core M and A team. We gotta delineate somehow. So core M and A team includes my M and A team and all of the folks across the various functions that are dedicated to M and A. They find out about things a little bit later. But still, before we sign an LOI and at the pre LOI stage, I'd say we start thinking about a rough profile for what the integration can look like. Is it going to be the rapid tuck in type integration model? Are we going to leave the business alone for a bit longer? Maybe it's in a brand new area that we don't have many internal resources covering. So we start thinking about that a little bit and we start estimating very high level what integration costs could look like based on prior experience, not so much based on any details because we don't have a lot of detail yet on that specific target. And we get to that later, as Carrie said.

Yeah, he's just hypothesizing a lot of this stuff pretty early and just have a general sense.

Yes, it's a swag at it, but it's an educated swag.

You don't need to be that specific record.

Oh, you know, for some of our smaller deals it helps especially if valuations have gotten out, you know, in the last year or so. They've come back down to earth, certainly. But through most of the seven years I've been at Ansys, it's been the run up and as valuations have climbed higher, every last dollar that you can squeeze out of anything in your model is valuable. Taking a rough estimate of integration costs, if you overshoot it, you could actually add Risk to getting the deal done because you can't justify the deal. I'd rather try. That's why I say it's educated. We take the information that we've got about the target at that early stage and we apply our past experience with different profile companies and what we actually go back and say, okay, what were actual integration costs on this prior deal that we did that about the same number of employees, the same geographic footprint. We try to be as precise in our guesswork as we can in our estimates. Guesswork is not doing it justice. It's much more than guesswork at that early stage for us.

I think that's the science. I see the front end as being more of the science and integration, the back end is more of the art.

You're right, Keisa. I mean, large deal, very large deals, if you're tens of millions off, it may not matter all that much. But most of our deals I'd put in the small tuck into mid sized deal.

I'm curious for myself. I'm looking at our first deals for a company and it is a balance. I can't ask for so much stuff and try to inundate the target right off the bat. You want to be very mindful that, hey, in consideration I'm getting the information and come up with a model to base a value. But then there's, I don't know if I got this other consciousness around doing all these podcast interviews and hearing where everything goes wrong in integration or the challenges that pop up, pop ups. There's surprises. So all of a sudden you're like, well, tell me more about that tech stack. What is it really going to cost to integrate it into our platform? And all of a sudden it's, you know, you start getting more into that earlier. It sounds like a lot of this is based off of benchmarking that you've already built that. So you have a good sense. That's what allows you to be able to put that upfront. So you get a sense of where you should be at.

Absolutely.

And then is there stuff that comes up later? Where is it built off that maybe you have like a big surprise and then you want to go back and renegotiate the deal Because Gary said, hey, wait a minute, you know, this is going to be a big challenge over here and some unexpected costs or something of that sort?

Yeah, it happens. But more based on diligence risks than miscalculation of integration. Fair enough, right? You find a risk that was unforeseen in the first days of talking to the target.

What is that usually like? Financial accounting's not the way you expected it. And here is something that may impact the financials.

There's some of that. There's also some compliance issues that most smaller targets don't have on staff attorneys. And they think they're doing the right thing and turns out that they've tripped up some regulation somewhere where they're doing business unwittingly and there could be a real liability associated with that, especially when it's inherited by a large public company that's much more visible than they are. At that point it's do we still do the deal? Do we still do the deal at this price? Or are there other contingencies we can put in place to protect ourselves?

So we get loi signed. What do we do next? Carrie, from integration perspective?

So we really start to document those assumptions and circulate that amongst the team. Because it's cross functionally, you need to understand what those assumptions are and that's going to help inform your integration planning. So that's sort of a starting point for us. You take that deal thesis, add in your assumptions for each of the functional areas. They can begin some of their planning from there. It's iterative. They have to be able to pivot or modify those plans if those assumptions change or as we learn more information. And during that time we're really thinking about, okay, this is the targeted information we need to receive after we close, just based on what we've received to date, what we don't know, what's missing. So we really start to hone in on some of those areas where this is what we need within the first 30 days or we'll have to tackle this within the first 90 days. So they're able to identify some of that analysis that needs to go a step further post close.

Getting really into the meat of planning here. So you map out assumptions. We have this investment thesis that we're buying this company because technology is going to fit well with our portfolio. We're going to be able to cross sell this into some of our existing customer base that is common. And then here's like, okay, well let's take these assumptions out and what does that mean to all the different functions? Because HR is going to say, well, we got to make sure these people got a good setup and understand who we're going to keep and who we may have duplicated roles that we want to eliminate. And then the departments and so forth of, okay, we're going to have a new product. How are we going to introduce this in our go to market. It is going to have their whole plethora of stuff. I want to get the easy part. I want to understand the hard part because the part you mentioned was there's doing that planning then that gives you a sense of milestones. Talk to me more about the iterative part because I published this book a while back. I think Russ probably remembers where it's contrasting the waterfall versus agile and that was the big business case was that hey, you should be very iterative in the process. Tell me more about that. How do you do that versus just trying to run through one big exercise of a planning event?

There's a lot of information that comes out post close so you can map out a plan and what you're going to do. Obviously once the sale is done and we start to integrate, there are a lot of little things that we learn that don't quite map to what those original assumptions were. That's when the teams really have to come together to figure out maybe it's something that involves in and how we're going to incorporate technology. So we may have had a plan to shift them within a certain period of time. We'll say six months. But we may find that just due to the technology and the dependence, maybe it's going to be 12 to 18 months. So it may be something just changing a timing or a timeframe. Sometimes it's pivoting and saying right now we're going to leave this piece as is. We're not going to make any changes because we don't want to experience any major business disruption for the clients and we want to keep everything steady.

I do want to go back because we skipped ahead. Now we're talking about post acquisition topics. Back to post LOI and pre deal and touch on. I said we'll likely hit on some of the process points. Let me hit on some of the process points. LOI is signed. We are now as a process point, we pull together that whole. Remember I referred to the core M and A team which has representatives from all of the functions as part of that team dedicated to M and A. Of course our M and A team is part of that. We're meeting usually twice a week depending on the size of the deal. Could be more or less, but usually twice a week and we're going round robin through the functions. What are you seeing? What's worrying you on this deal? What are you not seeing? What do you want to see out of the target? And you're just not getting information and what's your early planning? How you thinking about planning? What are we going to do about what you're learning in due diligence post dealing. And everybody gets to hear what every other function is seeing, not seeing and planning. And they can factor that into their work stream or they may have something to add to what they're hearing from another function. Or they might hear something about an integration plan that say sales has, that finance says, well, you're not thinking about all the right order entry issues that are going to pop up. Those are really live working sessions and like I said, they happen a couple of times per week during the deal process. Carrie and whoever from her team is going to be leading the integration effort are part of that too. Hearing all of that and starting to solidify the thoughts about how we're going to run that integration.

So getting a lot of the diligence information directly as it's coming in.

Yeah, 100% that's right.

You mentioned other acquirers don't really start thinking about integration until the very end of the process. And worse yet, sometimes after the deal is signed at that stage of the process for us is when we start pushing integration out front and center. So they've been involved in the process from the very beginning, but as we're getting to those latter stages, that's when they start taking over more of a lead role. So we have as part of our process, at some point towards the back end of pre signing, we get the executive team, at least the CEO together with again, Carrie or whoever's going to lead that integration. And the whole discussion is about our integration process, how we do it, what to expect. We give the CEO or if it's more members of the executive team an opportunity to ask us questions. They've got a lot of burning questions on their mind about what life is going to be like post deal and there's a lot of anxiety there. So it's the forum for them to get some of those questions off their chest and we answer as much as we can at that stage. It speaks to the point of they start becoming the face of the next phase of the transaction, which is the integration phase. But that's still before we sign the deal.

We will have internal integration kickoff meetings before we even close. Obviously we are informing some of the key founders of what's going to happen post close and really educate them on that process and who they need to be thinking about that would lead some of those functions as well on their side. Those expectations are being set early and we're Getting geared up so that post close, we can have a kickoff meeting within the first week or two and bring the teams together.

It sounds like there's a lot of different events, meetings that happen. Just trying to get a sense of as you bring people in because you will sign an LOI and it sounds like there's a kickoff meeting that happens shortly after you sign loi. This is the core.

That's right. M and A team.

We got to do diligence on this. Who's doing what? It's mentioned like twice a week is when you sort of have readouts on diligence.

That's right. Readouts and discussions about or dealing with what we're finding in diligence in the transaction terms. But also how are we going to deal with it during the integration? Is it going to affect our budget model? Is the way we're going to tackle some of the things that we find in diligence in the integration going to cause greater cost, higher expense? So we're talking about that in those bi weekly meetings.

Bi weekly, like what is it, Monday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday.

Usually Tuesday, Thursday, yeah.

How long are the meetings?

An hour?

An hour? Give me the agenda. I'm creating a playbook for somebody.

So usually the execution lead for the transaction leads those calls. That person will kick off the meeting with kind of announcements from the deal execution chair. Are we still on track for timing? For example, what are the things that. Corp Dev is an active part of the diligence team. We're not just a quarterback and project management. We actually have a substantive role in the diligence process. We're airing what we're seeing and what we see as a concern in diligence. And then that person goes around the horn, as I said, to each of the functions. Hey, Finance, you're up next. What are you seeing? What are you thinking? What's your concerns? HR on down the line and we get through every function and every call.

Start off at a high level. What are the main updates and where we're at with the deal status. And then let every function voice their position.

That's right.

How do we tie all this diligence to the integration part? Or is this sort of each function you discuss it at the same time?

Part of that goes back to your assumptions and your integration planning that we're starting to structure very early on. So all of those are inputs to those assumptions. They start to capture them. Obviously there's a lot of collaboration and conversation, but you have to start to capture some of those ideas and that's the basis for your integration plan and how you're going to roll it out. There's another element too that comes to mind. You're always observing the target company and even the differences in culture and you've got to think about that. What is their management style? How do they inform their employees on changes? What are the perks? That's always a big one. They'll have perks that we don't have. And we have to start thinking about how we're gonna manage through some of those things. Do they have a chef on site? Do they do yoga on Mondays? Can they bring their dog to work? All of those things. They seem silly but people really hang on to those things. They can become a big deal. So it's good for us to kind of know what those things are and be thinking about them early.

Yeah, we pay attention to to characteristics of a target company and how that plays into their culture purely from how we gonna integrate. It informs our integration plan. Those aren't deal killer issues. You don't need to know if they have a cafeteria or not to know whether you want to do the deal or not. There's no risk there really. But you need to know how you're gonna manage that out of the gates as an integration matter. Or you could lose the people right out of the gate. You could lose their and I lose, I mean hearts and minds. Not necessarily they're gonn out the door but you need to be mindful of that and set the right tone.

From day one as functions go around, I'm getting updates on what they're finding and we look back at our assumptions and this information around diligence is what's allowing us to detail our integration plan. The culture elements going to be another component that we're putting in consideration on how we're going to integrate the company. What's the big variable there? Because I've always been curious. Everybody always talks about it and they said oh, the culture this and that and different philosophies. Some are like well they're going to adopt our culture and they do have a very proactive approach about how do they get them to understand their culture and know that it's going to be a shift versus oh, we're going to combine them and build a unique culture. I don't know. I think there's different philosophies which is a whole other topic to get into. But is there things that you look at and say we follow more of a traditional top down management. This is startup is very bottoms up and is there certain themes that you have when you start thinking about culture or that you may want to start shifting your approach around?

We generally always want to bring that company into Ansys and make them part of our company overall. But I don't think there's a one size fits all. We really have looked at each of those integrations differently and approached them according to that culture and the way they operate and really figure out how best to insert them into Ansys. They're all hard because they're all different, but it's just when you think about it more individualistically versus broad brush, it really helps them to feel like they're part of the company and we're listening to them.

That's important for me, and that's part of the Ansys culture, which makes it night. We have four core values, and don't ask me to state them all here, but one of them is be open. And you could read that a lot of different ways. But one of the ways, obviously, is to be flexible, to be open to new ideas. We do have our own culture. It's palpable inside of Ansys, but we are open to understanding slightly different cultures. If it's a complete mismatch that starts to pervade how you're thinking about all of diligence and can you make this business a success inside of Ansys because you need their people to help make it a success? And if it's a complete culture mismatch, it's more than just cafeterias. It really calls into question your ability to execute on the core business objectives. If we have that, we get a sense of that culture mismatch. We get a sense of that in the very first couple of meetings, and we probably don't talk very long. I wouldn't say culture is always the make or break, but if we have what looks to be just a complete mismatch, I don't know that we'll get very far in the conversation.

Can we say culture? It's not so tactical that you have to worry about changing your strategy and approach to integration, but it's more of being mindful so that you can ultimately create a good people experience for the incoming people.

Absolutely true. I learned something today, and I'd say the imo, Carrie and her team take the responsibility for a lot of that cultural assessment and change management partnering with our HR organization. Everyone on our deal team, on that core M and a team needs to be mindful of it, at least with respect to their specific function. But the overall kind of responsibility for that aspect of it and paying attention to that element of it in our company rests with the IMO and hr. That's a common theme across other acquirers that have those functions involved in M and A.

Back in our readout room, what any other things on the integration side and how do we ultimately close out the meeting?

As we get closer to the signing and then closing events, we talk more and more about integration, what it's going to look like, what are the major priorities in these readout meetings. Because obviously our attention has shifted away from diligence. We've learned about all we're going to learn at that stage of the process about the company and now we're really putting those initial plans down on paper. The ultimate outcome for everybody involved in those sessions is delivery of content. That becomes our business case for our executive team to support final approval. So not everything said on all those calls end up in the business case, but the material issues do. The final financial model, but also our core elements of the high level integration plan across all the functions is part of our business case. I think that infuses some discipline around integration planning into our process with all members of the team knowing that they ultimately have to deliver a plan that the executive team is going to see. So that is an outcome from those meetings. Eventually it all leads up to a business case to support final approval.

And then Kerry, you mentioned as you get closer to closing, you're spending time with those founders executives and really helping them prepare for integration. What are those conversations like? What are those key things that you really hit on?

It's more just to be informative and set those expectations so that they know what's coming. And I want them to understand that it's a partnership. We want to hear from them, we want their input. It's really walking through what the integration process looks like within Ansys and some of the practices that we deploy. As part of that, we'll demonstrate to them how we structure the integration and who's responsible for each functional area. We ask that they think about who on their side would lead those functional areas as well. Sometimes if it's a smaller company, it may be the same one or two people for all the different functions where if it's a little larger then it may be a little more dispersed, but they need to think about that. That's a key element to integration. Who's going to lead it on their side? That's also the beauty of us being involved so early. We don't have to Go through the same questions with the target or the founders and ask all these questions that we don't know because we weren't informed early on. Hopefully we've already started to build that relationship and that rapport. That's something that I've really stressed with my team. I meet with whoever those key founders are on a weekly or bi weekly basis just to stay connected with them and make sure. Because in our integration meetings things come out, but the one on ones we get a lot more information. They'll share things with us, they'll raise things that they're not comfortable bringing to a larger group or audience. Those are the things that we really tackle and get in front of and prevent them becoming a problem.

If I was a founder and was going to have a big payday, I'd disappear for a whole month.

We incent them to stay around, but.

No, it was like disappearing for a month. I wouldn't disappear that long.

Also, a lot of these founders, they have the sense that this is their baby. They want to be around it and make sure things are off to a.

Good start or they do just buy a nice toy to spin around the parking lot.

I try not to focus on what they do. It might make me feel bad about what I've been doing for the last 25 years. Part of what we're trying to exhibit to the management team in those early meetings where we're explaining how we do integration and why we do things a certain way is to Carrie touched on to instill some confidence. That is a key part, but also to show them that we're transparent. We don't believe in hiding the ball about the way things are going to be for them. Post closing and for the most part, the calls that Carrie was referring to, they're not controversial. We're sharing what our process is. They ask some questions, but occasionally they'll ask or suggest that maybe we do something that we know is a non starter for Ansys. Let's continue Our benefits for 2 years post deal or 1 year post deal because these benefits that we have are really important to us and yours are a lot different. We know that's a non starter for us and we'll just tell them that. But we may think about are there other things that we can offer them that would be palatable to Ansys even if it's a slight comp increase because their cost of benefits are going to go up. We want people to have essentially the same take home pay, same amount of dollars in their pocket every week as they had prior, we might consider that, but we'll be upfront with them about the bounds of possibility. Again, trust is important and we try to establish that upfront in these calls.

Do you have an example of here's early integration planning and how it made a big impact in the deal more successful with extrality.

In particular, we had really thought through our timeline, those assumptions had been captured. So we were really trying to figure out within a certain timing how long it would take. I'm not sure if we had done that previously where we had really mapped out a formalized timeline, but that's something that I'd really pushed the team to do and it helped us to capture our milestones a little more effectively as well post integration, because we did do that upfront planning and really thinking through what are the things we have to accomplish or how do we get here. We have these assumptions, how do we validate those assumptions, what analysis has to be done, what data do we need? Because there's limited information that you can ask for during diligence, you don't want to overwhelm them. So we really start to go in and that's what we did for extrality. We mapped out all the elements that we needed in order to progress. And assuming we got that information, you're able to build out your timeline. As long as we can get this within 30 days, we can complete it within 90 days. So there were some post close assumptions that we made and that's how we sort of factored in our integration plan.

Sounds like that was a big factor, was just being able to get ahead of it, having that plan laid out with all those timelines and milestones. So it was agreeable.

Yeah. The tasks that are completed, we've had all those captured for each of the functions. Each of those functions has to go in and determine, okay, which of these tasks apply to this integration and what tasks do I need to add because it's unique in some way. That's a good rinse and repeat for the teams. They know what all has to be analyzed, what data we need. We've already got that structure and that foundation, so it's building off of there to create a reasonable project plan.

There have been a couple of instances where transition services have been part of the transaction, where we've carved a business out of a larger organization. And this model of early integration planning and having the integration teams involved early was particularly beneficial in those cases because you're planning how you're going to execute on the transition services, whether you're delivering Them or you're the recipient as buyer of transition services. That happens sometimes too. How that is going to work alongside of all your core integration activities. Sometimes transition services are seen as an add on a separate thing that's happening over here and you still have your integration plan. Well, transition services are happening during the integration, and many times the same resources that are responsible for seeing that the integration is working and that your tasks are getting done are also involved in the transition services. That integration team also is well versed in the costs of what things cost post deal in that early stage. And that can inform the economics around transition services as well. So I just point to deals where you have transition services as part of the transaction. This early model of integration planning works particularly effectively in those cases.

I like it. That's a good point. Of things that could complicate integration.

Absolutely. So we make it all, all these things work together in concert instead of just some complicating factor that's causing us noise and disruption. Off to the side, how does your partnership work?

How do you stay in sync? How do you. That was a big thing, Russ. You said, hey, look, I got a partner that wouldn't be able to do the deals I did. And I give you a lot of credit for that because usually deal guys don't do that. They take all the credit. But the integration people, that's a blame category.

I curious to hear what Carrie has to say about that. I mean, this has been a really great partnership. I used the word seamless earlier. It really is seamless. We probably talk four or five times a week, and that's when deals aren't happening. So you can imagine when we're in the midst of a diligence process, we're talking every day, multiple times a day. We're on the chat line constantly. And it's easy. It's seamless. It's easy. It works. I think it helps that we like each other. We spend some personal time together too, so it's good.

I agree. This kind of goes back to really early in the podcast when we talked about that reporting line. And that was an important factor for me. Having that connection with our team overall and being able to have team building, that's been really important for me. Our team is very cohesive. We get along really well. We're very close. Russ and I, I think, are very similar in the way we approach things. He allows us to be autonomous in what we do, and that was really important to me and the folks that work for me. So some of that is personality. Obviously, and for us it just works really well. But I think that's important. You need that cohesion to be able to communicate effectively and quickly and pivot. And that's just another important element.

Our whole team is very tight. You could be having this same conversation with any other two members of the team, any other member of the integration management team paired up with the other team members that do deal execution. And I think they tell you largely the same thing about how their relationship works in the midst of a deal. I have been doing M and A a very long time, and I think part of the way I've been able to do that is a bit of a work hard, play hard mentality. You know how deals are. When you're in the throw of a deal, you're on a schedule that most people in your organization never have to experience. Maybe the sales guides at the end of a quarter, but it's 24 7, it's weekends, it's holiday. When we have downtime and we get to enjoy a breather a bit, we like to go have some fun and get together and talk about something other than M and A and talk about each other's families and what they're up to and what do we like. I think that all plays back into. When we're in the throw of it, in the thick of it, we function at a very high level.

Eventually I'm going to have to find an integration partner. What's going to be like the one or two key things I should be looking for.

They have to be an effective communicator and a people person. At the end of the day, the day, I think all of M and A, every phase of M and A is a people business, but the integration certainly is. And they've got to be flexible. You asked about surprises earlier on. We don't get surprised. In a way that throws our whole deal thesis off. And we were completely wrong. And now we got to think whether this was a good deal or not. But we get a lot of little surprises along the way that make you make tweaks, adjustments to what you've set out in your integration plan and assumptions. And you've got to deal with those constructively and keep the overall business objectives in mind and adjust in a way that doesn't disrupt from achieving those objectives. Those are the two key traits. Good communication, people person and being flexible.

Having project management type of experience is also important. You've got timelines and deadlines and milestones. And you really need someone that's structured, that understands that space and can drive that side of it. But I agree with Russ. For these companies that are coming in, they're going through major change and you really have to care about those people and what they're going through. That's another key factor is someone that really has that empathetic lens of this is a major change that they're going through. And how can we ease some of their concerns and make them feel comfortable and trust us?

All of the members of our integration management office are champions for the acquired business. They still work for Ansys and they've got Antus best interests in mind. But they play a safeguarding role with respect to the acquired business and the acquired people and they take that role very seriously.

Communications, being empathetic and having some project management skills. Barry, this is a safe place. But what can Russ do to be better?

Well, he can pay me more. I don't know.

Yeah, that's good. Take care of people now.

I'm not sure I have anything.

Kind of some criticism. We put away the nice stuff.

I don't have anything off the top of my head. We recently had our mid year review and this is like, how's it going? I'm like, it's going great. The autonomy is there that I need and I think my team needs to be successful. And that was so big for me. That just works really well for my personality and helps me be more effective as a manager and a leader. To my direct reports. Maybe I haven't worked with him long enough. Maybe that's part of it. It's only been a year.

I'm going to come back to that at the company reception. All right, let's wrap up the couples therapy here. The question about kind of broader of aligning deal team, integration team, what would you say are the common challenges of that? Being that you've seen it both right, disconnected and connected.

Obviously, when you bring a team together and we do things outside of Minet, we have team building experiences and fortunately we're all pretty similar in what we like to do even outside of work. So sports is a big theme for all of us. Honestly, having that connection outside of work helps us to work together more effectively. It does help us to be more empathetic toward one another in how we work, how we approach things. We're all a little different in just how we approach our daily life and everybody plays a different role. That really has contributed to a lot of that stronger communication that we have a willingness to work together on issues that are a little and even coverage. Maybe they have something going on. They don't have the time to tackle certain topics or certain challenges that come up. And our team will step in. They'll step in and drive those things. Say, hey, I'll take that, I'll pick that up. That kind of goes back to having that team aspect, that team building that occurs.

So team is the big theme from this whole podcast of ultimately that's a challenge when you don't have a real. You have two different teams. But bringing both the deal. Team integration as a team seems to be the big thing to accomplish.

One thing you don't know about me personally, Kisan is my side hustle is I'm a Division 3 college softball coach. Softball is a team sport for me personally. This overemphasis on team, it comes from that I've been doing that not quite as long as I've been doing M and A, but I've been doing it for a very long time. And you can't do any aspect of what we do in M and A alone. And you shouldn't, you shouldn't. Even if you had the bandwidth to do it, even if you were the smartest person in the room and have seen it all, which no one has, but even if you think you did, there's just too much work, too many things to think about, too many things to plan for that you've got to do it as a team. And it's not just our M and A team inside of Corp Dev, but it's that core M and A team that I talked about that expands into the other functions. We proactively try to maintain that team culture, structure, approach to everything we're doing in the M and A practice.

If we were to create our list of best practices or approach to really synchronize deal and integration team members. Is it getting them to play softball together? That would be one good approach to.

Softball game come up.

It's one thing to go to the bar and drink together, but if you could actually do some kind of sport activity, I think that's fair.

I think it's also driving accountability. There's really a lot of accountability for each of these functions to step up and speak up when they see things that is this going to be an issue or should we discuss this? But really taking that accountability to see things through, that's another factor of success for us.

And that's absolutely.

ANSYS is very good at that.

I'll come back to the three elements we talked about at the outset as themes for us. That model the staffing and then the processes. All of that is meant to create this team approach that is more naturally collaborative and well coordinated. The one thing I want to say about it though, because I know some of your listeners, even if they do a couple of deals a year, will think we can't staff. Just from a cost perspective. Yes, MA is a part of our strategy, but we can't staff a dedicated person across every function. That's legitimate and I understand for some companies that's a constraint. At a minimum, then I would say have the same people. When you're borrowing from functions to get people involved in diligence and the integration to the greatest extent, you can have the same people doing that from one deal to the next, they're going to get to know each other that's involved in that M and A activity as a team. Even if they're not dedicated to it all the time, they're going to gain experience. So you're not training a new finance person every single deal, or a new legal person, or you name the function so it should be the same individual. They can have other roles in your organization if you can't dedicate them to M and A, but try to make it the same people from deal to deal.

The same people from deal to deal.

Meaning the same within each function. The same person in finance that moonlit on a deal the last time should be that same person on deal number two and deal number three. They'll start heading up the learning curve quickly again. They'll get used to working with the same group of people from the other functions that are involved in the M and A. That's a way that you can somewhat mirror the model that we have in place with the dedicated staffing without dedicating them solely to M and A. You also though, if you're going to have that model, their managers need to understand that when a deal is happening, the deal part of their role needs to take priority. It can't be, I'll get to the M and A piece that you put me on part time when I have time to get to it. Because you know M and A doesn't work that way. You've got a 30 day process, 45 day process.

This is an area that a lot of newer M and A per company because I think you hit the nail on the head with building the muscle is like getting the reps in.

Yep, that's right.

But then this part of that accountability or prioritization where M and A sits. I've heard a lot of corporate leaders struggle with that and it sounds like, you know, that's important, but like if you're coming in as the new guy.

I would make sure that everyone bought in. All the way up to the CEO. Frankly, if it's driven top down, it will happen. If each individual functional lead, functional manager, head of hr, head of legal, and I don't mean to pick on the back office. The same is true of sales and product. If they're not hearing from the executive leadership of the company that M and A is important to us and we got to get it right and everybody across the organization needs to be on board. They're going to operate in a way that benefits their function the most. On a day to day basis. Sure. Okay, I hear we're doing a deal. But I also have my sales targets to hit this quarter and so that's going to take priority and all my resources are going to be dedicated to that. And if they have time, they'll work on your M and A project. You can't have that. You can't dabble in M and A in that way and get it right.

When there is a lack of accountability. You will not meet your timeline, you won't meet your milestones, you won't close the deal in your targeted timeframe. And it's really hard to wrap up the deal and to close it out as an integration with the business because there are so many loose ends that you're not able to wrap up. It really has a severe impact on the success of closing the integration and really making it part of the company.

And oh, by the way, all of that, all of those stumbles are being witnessed by the target company and their management team. And you're sending a message, this isn't important enough to this company that is now going to own my business. So even if you make it across the finish line, you're going to lose people and you're going to lose the value props that you were looking at that target for in the first place.

You ever had to put a leader in their place about M and A priority?

Not at Ansys, but at former companies? Yes.

How do you do that? You found a successful way to do that.

It's very difficult when they have certain egos. It's very challenging. And it's a series of conversations and there have been times when I've had to go to their business sponsors or the executives they report to and have them help. So I try and do it as much as I can. Sometimes there are limitations and you have to engage other leaders to Pull them.

Along, have an intervention. Let's just go all out on this.

I mean, you try to avoid the escalation route because most times you're going to have to work with that leader again and again and again. But I agree with Carrie. Sometimes you just have to.

I've been working on this framework fire led M&A. I spent a lot of time just thinking about a point, actually. A marketing team challenged me to have a point of view in the market and I spent a lot of time just reflecting, doing a bunch of these podcast interviews. And what I concluded is when you get a company and they do their first M and A deal, it is very seller led. It's following a very traditional approach. Maybe there's a banker involved, but it's pretty much the whole process is driven through the sell side. As they continue doing deals, it becomes more and more buyer led because you realize how you need to optimize for the better results. And it could be from the way you source deals, it should be straight against the strategy. You shouldn't just wait for stuff to fall into the lab, moving into just your information handling, having it all centralized. So now you can better leverage the information flow from stages and then the synchronization which you talked about between diligence and integration. The other pillar I think is scale, which we talked about, the resource allocation and then getting the reps in, really building that out for scale. And then the last one would be a win win is how do you make it a good people experience for both sides that it's clearly going to be a value add for everyone.

I agree with all that. But when you get to the point where you're in a position to be the buyer led M and a buyer, you need to have the fortitude to stick with that, to have the confidence that the way you're doing things is the right way. And so if you find an opportunity where the seller or their banker is trying to push you, not in a way that if you nudged a little bit, you could go along with, I'm not talking about drawing lines for the sake of drawing lines, but if they're trying to push you to either agree to something or do something in a way that you know is just not going to be successful on the back end, is not going to help the deal be successful, it's like being on a car dealership lot. You got to be willing to walk away. That is power. When you're willing to walk away because you know your price is the right price or whatever. When you get to that point as buyer led M and A, you got to stick to that. In many ways, that's how we operate.

When you're in the auction process, multiple bidders, I understand the seller slash banker wants to have some control, but once you sign loi, I think this is where you described it's fair to have. You're putting up the cash, you're committing to getting the deal done. Your team has standardized a lot of things and their approach in doing deals. And frankly, you have more people involved.

That's right.

And that's where I'm always curious because I've noticed that when I see some corporate leaders that aren't as experienced will hesitate and they'll say, oh, it's a big brand bank. We got to follow their process.

We are very transparent with bankers in those situations up front that once we sign an loi, it's largely got to be our process or the deal won't happen because we won't be able to get the approval we need ultimately at the end, from our executive team, they have an expectation of what a business case is going to look like, what it's going to include and the type of diligence that we've done along the way. The type of integration planning that we've done. They expect to see that. And if they don't see it, the answer is no, because they just will feel like we haven't done our homework and done things the way that has always made us successful. That will be perceived as risk and we're a very disciplined acquirer. This podcast has all been about integration. If we don't have an integration plan that is part of our final business case and. And the answer is the banker pushed us to do our integration planning post deal. We've never said that, by the way, because we know the way it's going to turn out. But if that were a case where we got pushed to that type of paradigm, the answer would be no. We tell bankers that up front this is how we're going to have to do it and it benefits you. We don't walk from deals once we're in it, but we have to do things the way we do things.

It's tough. They're not incentivized for any of your integration success at all.

I say if they price, that's what should matter to them. We're going to do right by the target. We always do. We've talked about hitting objectives and metrics very generically, but among our metrics that we measure and that are Very important to us is employee retention and we're again mid to high 90s on every one of our deals.

Buyer led is front loading integration. Because as a buyer saying, hey, we really want to make sure we're going to plan and execute integration.

Well, yeah, for us it speaks to the rigor in the process and what we've learned throughout all the different integrations that we've experienced. That's the science that we've put into play and this is the way that we're going to have to operate to be successful. We've demonstrated that retention rates, the success of these businesses that we bring into Ansys. The other interesting element at Ansys that I haven't experienced before is that the integration team still stays involved with each of those integrations. And as we track their performance, if their performance seems to decrease in any way, we will get actively involved and really try to make sure that they can get back on track and they have a plan for that. And that's something that I haven't experienced in the past. In the past, once integration was done, we walked away. Not our problem anymore. And that attitude that we have of we're always going to ensure that integration is going to be successful even when they become part of Ansys. It's another element of that success that we've been able to capture.

I like it. It's like plan early but also plan to stay a while longer.

Absolutely.

We don't forget once we're closing out the integration, we always tell those teams, you can come to us, will help you if you need something, reach out. And we're sincere about that. And so I think that's something that's unique to Ansys and the culture that we have.

I just brought the biolet stuff up. I haven't even told you but I.

Was like, I don't think we've talked about that.

Yeah, well, to figure out conversation I thought why not make an actual framework that we could publish. You see all these organizations learn it through trials and tribulation versus we can build a framework around it and just consolidate what the lessons learned around how your process evolves to be bioled. Yeah, it's a journey and usually it's around like 10 deals. Then it's you seeing a lot of the things that we're talking about that they're actually doing it after a lot of pain. To that end, one of the other pieces, the win win people experience. What are you doing to make an amazing people experience? This is a huge differentiator for companies, if you're not again, you follow that aggressive process. Didn't do integration planning, probably don't have things in place to wow the incoming employees. So what are some of the lessons learned and things you do now?

Mapping out that employee experience or that journey is really important. We're probably experiencing that in a different way right now. But really understanding how this will impact the employees and being able to map that out and identify some of those areas, I think it's critical. That's where you start to really build some of that empathy as well. To see these are the changes that the employees are going to go through. And so you have to look at it under a couple of different lenses because you've got the lens of the employees coming into a new company. But then there's also the lens of these managers that are coming in to Ansys and we do things a different way. How will that be managed? How do they help their employees transition? So it's sort of arming them with more information, different approaches, thinking through how that will impact how they lead their individuals and that all builds into that retention. When you feel like you're part of the company and you're being considered as part of that equation, it really does. It goes a long way.

A couple of things small, but go a long way. Our CEO makes it a point to address acquired teams when they come into the company. Maybe it's not so small because he's a CEO of a 6,000 person company, a public company, but it's. But if he doesn't show up on site to welcome them very shortly after an acquisition, he'll do a video message, he'll send an email. Other executive leaders across Ansys will send emails to the entire acquired team, welcoming them, talking a bit about why we acquired them, why they were so special to Ansys. And then at every quarterly company meeting that we have all hands meeting, the first one after an acquisition happens, the CEO mentions it again to all of the Ansys employees. Welcoming this new team from XYZ Company again goes back to what Carrie said. We want to make them feel like you're part of the family and you're important.

I think there's a lot of planning has been another key theme here. But elements around culture, the more mindful and better you understand it, it's going to position you better to create a stronger people experience. And then to your point, Ras just making it personal, the CEO directly going to meet them. Those things really make it personal matter. Before we wrap up, you know, I got to ask, what's the craziest thing.

You'Ve seen in M and A Kisan? We've done a couple of these, so I'm not sure which stories I've told. I forget what stories I've told. I know the one about the founder of the bookstore chain that held up the closing and this is a deal where he was going to make life changing money, held up the deal on the closing table so all of his family members could get 25% discount for the rest of their lives at this bookstore chain. I think I told you that one before. I'll give you one that's a trend. It's actually a troubling trend and in my mind it's crazy. I'd say in the last couple of years the number of last minute surprises in price negotiations with another buyer coming over the top, even in deal processes where there wasn't a banker involved. I'm not sure what's going on, but I practiced M and a for 22 years. I can't think of any situations where you had a handshake on price and in a couple of cases assigned loi on price and the company comes back and says, oh, we just got a call from another company offering more than you. I don't want to say anything untoward is going on, but it's happened on a few occasions in the last few years and it's a troubling trend. And in my mind it's very crazy.

Someone's gossiping.

Yeah, obviously I'm very people centric. Things that have happened in the past that stand out to me. There was one particular deal where we made the purchase days before this company was going public. And that is the best way to make people dislike you. There's pre IPO and you swoop in and purchase and it's really hard to get them on board. And I do not suggest that. So that was one of the craziest things I've ever experienced.

I'm pretty sure I know which deal you're talking about.

Yeah, you probably do.

That is actually crap. I'm going to pick that conversation too at reception because I was so curious. I know the whole event was such a big surprise for the market that all of a sudden, wow, I feel got hijacked. I never thought about the employees.

Never. The employees are so critical to the success.

This has been great conversation. I had a lot of fun. I learned a lot. You've helped me become a better M and a scientist.

Thank you for having us.

Yeah, I'm in the midst of M and A royalty.

Don't flatter me too much. Those of you still listening, My fellow M and A scientist, I appreciate you. I value and want to continue finding ways to create and deliver value back to our community. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I welcome feedback, more importantly the criticism, so I can keep challenging myself to get better and topic ideas. Till next time. Here's to the deal.

Thank you for taking the time to explore the world of M and A with our podcast. We love hearing feedback. Tag us on a LinkedIn post. Add a review on Apple Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. If you need help standing up an M and A function or optimizing one that you already have, we're here to help. And if we can't help you, we probably know someone that can. You can reach out to me by email Kisan K I S o n a science.com or you can text me directly at 312-857-3711. If you just want to keep learning at your own pace, visit mascience.com for a lot more content and resources. That's where you can also subscribe to our newsletter. Again, that's mascience.com here's to the deal. Views and opinions expressed on M and A Science reflect only those individuals and do not reflect the views of any company or entity mentioned or affiliated with any individual. This podcast is purely educational and is not intended to serve as a basis for any investment or financial decisions.